


Interludes

by theputterer



Series: assorted nonsense timestamps [3]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Assassination Attempt(s), Cameos, Disorderly Conduct, Expanded Universe, F/M, Flashbacks, Ghosts, Growing Up, Mutual Pining, Near Death Experiences, No One's Ever Really Gone, Post-War, Separation, Soul-Searching, Suicidal Thoughts, Visions in dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-01-06 09:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18385721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theputterer/pseuds/theputterer
Summary: A moon will never change its course; it's a satellite in orbit, and will stay with the planet it orbits.A star will travel in its own separate path, moving at incredible speed. The brighter a star appears, the closer it is to the observer.To this moon, this star is growing dimmer.[Cassian is the moon, Jyn is the star, the War is the planet, and the galaxy is on a collision course four years in the making.]





	1. Year One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leaiorganas (marcasite)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marcasite/gifts).



> This story takes place, chronologically, between SOMETHING YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE A NAME FOR and AMOR FATI. I think you can probably get away without reading either of those, but don't quote me on that.

* * *

  

_And stars, which gave us the word distance,_

_so we could name our deepest sadness._

 

\--Lisel Mueller, from "Necessities", from _Second Language (1986)_

 

* * *

  

**6 ABY**

The man sitting across from her has dark green eyes, green like the emeralds mined on Morellia, green like a weed that lingers on the ocean floor, ready to ensnare and yank you down.

Jyn meets these eyes unflinchingly.

Fleetingly, she wonders what he thinks when he looks at her eyes. Her eyes are green, too, but only mossy. Only something errant that a single stomp of your boot can easily squish. Only something cheap and artificial from a backwater planet.

His green eyes flicker down to the table, and she obliges.

She knocks back the shot of Shesharilian vodka, and the man groans.

 _“Stang,”_ he spits.

A full shot of Shesharilian vodka is carelessly slid his way, and he manages to catch it before it exits the bartop entirely. His bald head gleams with sweat in the swaying light, and his face is bright red. He stares the shot down, licking his lips.

Jyn turns her attention to the empty shot glasses lined up in front of her.

She waits.

Off one damp glass edge, she manages to catch the reflection of the man sliding off his stool.

“That’s right,” Jyn says, but it comes out closer to _thass righ._ She watches as a few grumbling patrons finish retrieving crumpled and beaten credits from their pockets, and only then does she make her move, corralling the small stack to her, tossing it all mindlessly into her satchel.

A tall glass of water seemingly appears from nowhere, lined up innocuously alongside the shot glasses. The last shot of vodka has either been returned to the bartender, or else tossed back by a gambling patron, and so the water is a shocking amount of liquid next to the line of empty glasses.

“You don’t have to do that,” Jyn says, but it sounds more like _You dohn haf ta do tha._

“Can’t have my favorite customer in the med center with alcohol poisoning,” a lilting voice replies. Jyn’s vision blurs, but she still catches a brief glimpse of a young woman with mousy gray hair and sand colored skin, an amused grin dotting her face.

“I’m your favorite customer?” Jyn asks. _I’m yur fav-rit customa?_

“You’re the only one in here four times a week. So yes.”

Jyn blinks.

The glass of water sweats innocently back at her.

“I’m calling a transport for you, Erso. To make sure you get back to your little farm in one piece.”

 

* * *

 

The slanting sunlight gives way to her splitting headache.

Jyn groans, and moves to throw her pillow over her face, but the movement induces a wave of nausea starting somewhere in her sternum. Her rapid movement to lean over the couch only adds to it, and she watches pale vomit splatter on the beaten tile floor.

Her breath smells like the inside of a rancor’s cave.

“Morning,” Jyn mumbles, and the fact that the two syllables string together to form a cohesive, if very soft, _morning,_ gives her a brief winning feeling of pride.

But then the nausea returns, and she only feels exhaustion and pain.

 

* * *

 

It is not morning, but closer to three in the afternoon.

Jyn counts this as something of a win, considering she stumbled through the door somewhere around four in the morning. Her sleep had been instantaneous, though not relaxing or restful. It has not been for some time.

But she thinks she must have kept the tossing and turning to a minimum, considering she has found just the recent piles of vomit on the floor. There is only the one incriminating trail leading from the front door to the couch in the front room, the single journey she believes she took the night before.

It’s something.

She needs all the wins she can get, so she takes it.

She hobbles into the fresher, tearing her clothes off and dropping them on the way. The water is a shock of cold on her flushed skin, and she yelps, the sound echoing around the room. She forces herself to remain under the spray, eyes twisted shut, the pounding in her head keeping time with the sound the water makes as it drips off the edge of the door. The room is largely dark, only illuminated by the light coming in through the small window near the ceiling, and this allows Jyn to give herself some time to adjust to sunlight.

She only leaves the fresher when her hands begin to wrinkle.

Food is still out of the question, but she makes herself drink water, even managing to drink out of a glass once she’s gobbled down several mouthfuls under the faucet in the kitchen sink. The glass has a crack on it like a spider’s web, and she stares at it, turning the glass side to side, watching the way the breaks warp in the differing light.

She feels much better after the shower; more awake, less gross. Something closer to human, when feeling _human_ has been nebulous as of late.

She dresses simply, a plain black sweater and an old pair of gray pants, and walks around the house in bare feet. She turns on the holonet, listening to news headlines coming in from across the galaxy, as she works to clean up her own vomit. The smell of the stale vomit is revolting, and can easily cause a whole new swell of nausea, and so she’s grateful for the dull voice speaking around her, giving her something else to focus on.

“The Krantian Civil War came to an end this week,” a voice says, speaking in formal Coruscanti Basic, and Jyn scrubs at the mess on her front room floor. “The conflict on Krant began some six years earlier, following an uprising by the native Krantians against Imperial Moff Yittreas and his forces. The Imperial Empire had been mining the natural resources of Krant and its two moons since the beginning of its regime, but the indigenous people of the sector were unable to strike back until they were given assistance by the rebel organization that preceded the Alliance. One member of this team was none other than current New Republic Minister of Defense Leia Organa, who returned to Krant last week to reclaim--”

Jyn jabs her hand at the turn dial of the holonet. It fizzes for a moment, before landing on a different news station.

“Imperial Grand Admiral Octavian Grant has defected to the New Republic, an announcement made today by the New Republic Department of Defense--”

_Fizz._

“The hunt for the Imperial leader known as Zsinj continues, with rumors circulating he is currently hiding in the D’astan Sector, attempting to marshal forces sympathetic to his anti-New Republic campaign. The New Republic Department of Defense refused comment, though it is likely spies in Intelligence--”

_Fizz._

“Chief of State Mon Mothma confirmed recent reports that the New Republic is abandoning the guerilla tactics of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, in favor of a campaign that makes taking total control of Core Worlds a priority. The New Republic has established its capital as Mothma’s homeworld of Chandrila, but--”

_Smash._

Jyn looks at the broken machine, lying in pieces from the force she’d used to throw it to the cold tile. The shards glimmer in the slight sunlight, and she gets to her feet.

A walk, she decides, is a good idea.

Some more of that wretched time and space to clear her head.

 

* * *

 

She had thought the sunlight was oddly dreary due to the general grime of the house, but stepping outside reminds her that Lah’mu is always a little dreary.

It’s beautiful, of course. There is so much to love in its nature, from the wild waves of green field and seagrass, to the rugged and majestic hills and cliffs, to the long and deep black sand of the beaches, to the gray and endless sea, holding it all together. Lah’mu is a backwater world, a quiet world, often overlooked and forgotten.

It’s home.

It has to be.

Jyn turns her chin down as the wind from the ocean smacks into her face, tossing bits of salt into her eyes. The tall grass that lines what was once the Erso Homestead wraps around her knees, and pockets of deep mud swallow her boots, all seemingly in an effort to trap her in the earth. She kicks herself free, even though part of her isn’t all that convinced being pulled into the soil is an entirely bad thing.

The sun blinks down at her, all ragged white light.

She pauses at the edge of the homestead, tipping her head up, waiting for it to soak into her skin.

It does, shallowly.

She aches.

She shuffles down to the shore, standing there, prone before the sea in all its rage and certainty. A storm is rolling in, on the horizon’s edge, and she squints, thinking she might be seeing flashes of lightning among the purple clouds. A couple gulls fly overhead, cawing loudly, caws that are still nearly drowned by the crashing waves.

She shakes her boots and socks off, depositing them carelessly on the black sand.

The waves beckon, and she lets herself be pulled.

The salt water is chilled, and she grits her teeth at the bite, focusing instead on the sight of the gray sea swirling around her pale ankles. Her feet always look warped under the water; as a girl, she liked to imagine she could sprout webbing in between her toes, to follow her secret destiny of becoming a creature that lived exclusively in the sea.

No webbing ever appeared. She does not expect it now.

Though she very much wishes it might.

She hobbles along through the surf, her toes slowly going numb. The sea rolls nearby, and a school of miniscule fish frolic over her feet, silver scales briefly brushing her skin. A tuft of seaweed, lodged under a gray stone, waves from under the surface. She yanks out a handful, turning the dark green plant over in her hands, briefly thinking of the dark green eyes of her drinking partner from the night before.

She’d drunk him under the table; her hangover was worse, but he’s probably hurting somewhere, too.

She wishes she cared more.

“You all right, miss?”

Jyn jumps, nearly causing herself to fall back into the foamy sea. She blinks, taking in the sight of an old man on the shore. He’s got wispy white hair, a thin beard, and lined tan skin. His sweater is made of a hearty yarn, pants similarly durable, and water boots brushing the bottoms of his thighs. A couple nets are stretched out on the sand next to him, a few more buckets beyond.

She thinks of the silver fish from earlier, and hopes she has not impeded the fisherman’s progress for the day.

“I’m fine,” she manages.

The fisherman eyes her.

Jyn turns her head, studying the half dozen or so little cottages on the beach, each painted in off-whites or light grays. She has walked much further than she thought she had, for when she looks back, she can’t see the hills of the Erso Homestead behind her.

“You look a little lost,” the fisherman says, gently.

“Just went a bit further than I was planning to,” Jyn admits, blinking at the fisherman. The sun has begun to set behind them, and it’s a little difficult to catch his expressions.

The fisherman nods. “There are worse things.”

“Er… Yeah.”

“But the sun’s going down,” he continues. “Maybe this is as far as you should go.”

Jyn nods, twisting her fingers in the pockets of her jacket. “Yeah. I’ll head home.”

She is twenty yards away from the fisherman, going back the way she came, walking in the direction of the Erso Homestead, but if there is such a thing as an inner compass that points home, a feeling of knowing you are approaching home; she does not feel it.

 

* * *

 

“What’s tonight’s poison? Shesharilian vodka, again?”

Jyn’s stomach rolls just at the name. Some of this must translate onto her expression, for Mika laughs, loudly. It is not an affectionate laugh, but a scornful, mocking one. Jyn is less stung than she probably should be. But she’s been coming to Mika for months, and feels like she’s gotten to know her personality pretty well.

“I’ve never seen Lior so sick,” Mika continues. “You made my night.”

“Thanks,” Jyn says, dryly.

“Hey, cheer up. I’m about to make you a drink, on the house, for that stunt you pulled.”

“Just one drink?”

Mika laughs again. This laugh is less mocking.

“Don’t get greedy, Erso,” she replies. “What’ll it be?”

“Surprise me.”

Mika’s eyebrows, today a dynamite purple, soar. “Yeah? On your grave, then.”

Jyn watches as Mika seizes different liquids of different textures and colors. Mika’s hair today is purple, spiky and short, cutting her chin. She is not the owner of this bar, but she has been the bartender for every night Jyn has been in, which is quite often. More often than Jyn likes to think about.

Often enough that Mika treats Jyn like one of her beloved regulars, the drunkards, the bastards, the poor fishermen and farmers that run this backwater area of a backwater planet.

Just more on the list of things Jyn does not like to think about.

A tall, willowy sort of glass appears in front of her. The liquid is electric-looking, bright yellows mixing with zealous reds. Jyn spots a cut of an unknown fruit floating in it.

“The hell is this?” she asks, eyeing Mika.

Mika winks. “Try it.”

Mika has not yet poisoned her (aside from enthusiastically encouraging Jyn to challenge random bar-goers to intense drinking matches) so Jyn pulls the glass forward, and takes a long gulp. It’s fruity, as advertised, yet acrid. She feels very awake.

“Is there spice in here?” she asks, wary, thinking getting high on illicit drugs is the _last_ thing she needs.

Mika snorts. “Kriff no. I run a reputable establishment.” She reaches forward, tapping the glass with one sharp talon-like nail. A crescent-shaped dark blue fruit, followed by a round yellow fruit, floats past her nail. “It’s just red wine, lemonade, sunfruit, and moonglow.”

Jyn snorts. “Yeah, right. No one can afford moonglow.”

“Sure, _real_ moonglow. This is some synthetic kind grown by a botanist over on Sernpidal.”

Jyn’s throat is suddenly very dry.

“We get a lot of our so-called exotic foodstuffs from Sernpidal, which I guess isn’t _too_ weird, since it’s the biggest planet in the quadrant… Their moonglow’s supposed to taste similar to the real thing, but who knows, really? No one who’s ever tasted real moonglow would be out and about trying the fake stuff.”

Mika shuffles away, to check on another patron.

Jyn stares at the drink in her hand.

_“We’re going to go to Sernpidal next time, right? To find your family?”_

_“I think I would like to go to Sernpidal. I would like to see where my mother was from, and I’d like to find her family, if I could.”_

_“Cass, you could have a family again.”_

_“I would like to meet my mother’s relatives, and find out who she was, but, Jyn, you… You know that I consider you to be my family, right? You know that you’re all the family I could need?”_

She blinks.

She shoves the drink away from her. It takes all her focus and restraint to not throw the glass to the floor.

It is not Mika’s fault.

It is not her mess to clean up.

“You unbelievable bastard,” Jyn says, glaring at the glass, the drink of sunfruit and moonglow, the drink rooted in Sernpidal, the drink that unwittingly sends her spiraling back years.

To promises made then; promises now shattered.

“Hey.”

It’s a man’s voice, and for one, shining moment, one moment of pure and stupid _hope,_ of naive _relief,_ Jyn believes. She turns.

Seaweed eyes glare down at her.

“Oh,” she says. “You.”

Lior, or whatever Mika had called him. Their drinking contest had been three days earlier.

“Yeah, _me,”_ Lior snarls, and his tone slightly alarms her; she doesn’t remember him sounding this rude, or mean. Maybe even a little dangerous. “I want my credits back.”

Jyn raises an eyebrow. “I don’t see why. You lost.”

“Because you spiked my drink!”

“Like hell I did,” Jyn says. “Mika was pouring the shots, and giving them to us. I had nothing to do with it.”

“How do I know you didn’t have an agreement with her, eh? Give her a cut of the _profits?_ The credits off the hardworking men of this town?”

“Not sure I’d refer to the gents patronizing a bar at midnight on a work night as _hardworking men,_ ” Jyn snarls, disdain dripping from her words.

“You swindled us!”

Jyn glances behind Lior. He’s brought a couple friends.

“You gambled,” she says, plainly. “You chose badly. Leave me alone.”

“No way was I out-drunk by some outsider, uptight _bitch-”_

Jyn decks him.

She is barely aware of punching him, even less aware of choosing to do so. One moment, he’s standing over her, green eyes wild with hate and fury, and the next, he’s sprawled on the floor.

All she feels is a pulsing _rage._ It is such a drastic change from the cynicism and numbness that has held her tightly these past months that she watches everything happen with intense and sudden clarity.

His arm swings limply, and on the way down, he knocks over her glass of wine and moonglow.

She watches the liquid, dark red and yellow, spill off the stained wooden bartop, to drip on the floor.

Two slices of fruit slide out onto the hardwood, one dark blue and one bright yellow, both stained in red from the wine. The yellow sunfruit is frayed, matching the crescent shaped moonglow, and the two fall in position to mirror each other.

Jyn stares at the two slices.

She glances up just in time to catch one of Lior’s friend’s fist on her cheek.

 

* * *

 

The light is very soft.

Jyn blinks.

She’s standing on the plateau overlooking the sea, with tall green grass brushing her bare toes, a thin breeze ruffling her hair. It is far brighter than she has ever seen Lah’mu, the sun so hot it leaves her skin prickling. The sea glows under the light, the waves seemingly lit up with yellow diamonds.

“Hello, Jyn.”

There’s a woman standing beside her.

The woman is much taller than Jyn, with black skin and a narrow face. She’s dressed plainly, and all in white: white shirt, white pants, and bare feet. Her wide nose is slightly crooked, suggesting it has been broken before. She has long midnight black hair, falling in thin braids down her thin frame, to her waist. She turns her head, and smiles at Jyn, her electric blue eyes lighting up in the sunlight.

Jyn has never met her, has never even seen a picture of her, but she recognizes her right away.

Perhaps it is only because Cassian has described her with such pained fondness; or perhaps it is because there is something of _longing_ in this woman’s eyes, a _longing_ that Jyn knows intimately.

“Taraja,” she says.

Taraja’s grin widens. She seems to glow in the light of the Lah’mu sun, turning her ethereal.

Jyn has to look away.

“Am I dead?” she asks.

“Do you think you’re dead?” Taraja replies.

“Not really,” Jyn admits. “But, uh, you’re here. And you’re dead.”

“Yes.”

“So…”

“I’ll spare you the suspense,” Taraja says, in a quick, sharp accent; it is an accent only like Cassian’s in that it was also borne from the Outer Rim. “You aren’t dead, Jyn. Not today.”

Jyn blinks.

_Mika. The bar._

_Lior. His cronies._

_Sunfruit and moonglow, spilled on hardwood._

“Oh,” Jyn breathes.

Taraja’s glowing friendliness has faded, passing like a cloud over a sun.

“You’re going to need a minute to recover from that hit,” she says. “He got you pretty good. You weren’t expecting it. And you weren’t paying attention. It’s been a while since you were on a battlefield, hasn’t it?”

“Months,” Jyn says.

“Yes. The war is over.”

Jyn scowls. “Tell Cassian that.”

“Ha!” Taraja laughs. Her laugh is loud, unashamed, and so distinctly un-Cassian that Jyn finds herself finally able to look back at her. “That’s the trick, isn’t it? _Tell Cassian._ Kriff.”

“Why are you here?”

Taraja shrugs. “I think you needed someone.”

“And you just… Showed up?”

“I like it here,” Taraja says, turning to look at the sea. Her eyes are a shade of light blue lighter than any Jyn has seen; they look transparent in the sunlight. “I only saw an ocean once in my life. It seemed… impossible. Endless sea. I was used to the endless desert, but the sea was something else entirely. There is something wistful in a sea, is there not?”

Jyn isn’t sure she’s following this line of thought, but the _longing_ is back in Taraja’s voice, and that’s a feeling she can empathize with.

“He misses you a lot,” Jyn says, because it’s true, and because it’s something solid she knows about Cassian, this one person linking her to Taraja, this ghost of the only woman he loved before Jyn.

“Not as much as he misses you.”

Jyn swallows, and has to look away again. There is nothing cruel or jealous in Taraja’s words, nothing resigned or sorrowful: Only a simple truth. It does not make it easier for Jyn to hear.

“I’m sorry, Jyn,” Taraja says.

“It isn’t your fault.”

“No,” she agrees. “But if you need someone to be angry at, someone who can hear you now; go for it.”

Jyn looks back at Taraja. The sun rises tall behind her, illuminating her head in a golden halo. She’s got a tiny scar on her cheek, shockingly white teeth, and a kind of naked sympathy in her eyes that Jyn has always longed to see.

“I am angry,” Jyn says.

“That’s fair.”

“I don’t… What do I _do_ with it?”

“A good question,” Taraja agrees. “Trying to do some good out of your anger? That’s an important lesson, Jyn.”

“I never got it,” Jyn says.

“Doesn’t mean you can’t teach it.”

Jyn frowns. Taraja studies the sea again.

“You’ll land on your feet,” she says. “You always do.”

“Is this really why you’re here?” Jyn asks, somewhat sarcastically. “To give advice?”

“Maybe you should really be asking something else. Like: Why are _you_ here, Jyn?”

“Where else would I be?”

Taraja nods. “Where, indeed.”

The sun climbs the horizon. Jyn tilts her head up, letting the sun permeate her skin. She knows it is not real, knows none of this can _possibly_ be real, and yet the warmth is a balm. For a moment, all her heartbreak feels soothed.

It hits her all at once: _This is not home._

Her eyes fly open, Taraja smiles, and the world falls away.

 

* * *

 

It is the first time she has ever seen Mika worried about her, in all their months of talking and colluding, and it only cements the feeling Jyn wakes up with: That this place, Lah’mu, is not what she has so painfully been searching for.

(She does not remember Taraja, or her words: But the feeling of craving warmth, the feeling of craving empathy and companionship, the feeling of knowing _this is not right:_ these are all things she wakes up with, and internalizes greatly.)

Lior and his friends have already disappeared; Mika got them out, aided by a few other patrons, all of whom helped only because they didn’t want a full scale fight that would get the bar shut down early.

“I have to go,” Jyn says.

Mika frowns. “Need me to call a transport? The med center is half a mile away, but--”

“No. I have to leave.”

“Huh? Leave--”

“Goodbye, Mika.”

Jyn is out the door, leaving Mika nonplussed, but not worried, in the bar behind her.

Outside, the bar looks small and seedy. There is nothing friendly about it, and that is what drew Jyn to it in the first place. She needed something that reminded her of her; and the bar with its gloominess, its isolation, its indifference; it was perfect.

But she knows that none of those things are _her._

They were only what she wished she could be.

Better those things, she figured, than the heartbreak, grief, and anger that was scalding her from the inside.

The only things she has felt since Cassian left their apartment on Corellia, bound for Chandrila and the New Republic Department of Defense, headed straight back into the war that Jyn cannot bear to be apart of anymore. The only emotions Jyn has known since watching Cassian choose the war over her, something he’d always warned her he would do, but something she had so foolishly hoped he would not.

 _Hope is foolish,_ Jyn thinks, and hates the thought.

Inside the Erso Homestead, she looks around.

Despite months of habitation, it still looks empty. There is no personality, no warmth, no sense of a home, no sign of an effort to _make_ it a home.

It’s all been staring her in the face for months; she’s just been unable to see it, and not ready to face it.

Lah’mu is not home.

 

* * *

 

She stands under the board listing the available flights off Lah’mu, her bag slung over her shoulder. She had filled it with everything she’d brought from Corellia; which was only clothes. The rest of their things: furniture, dishes, bedsheets, everything that constituted a life, remained back in the flat in Corellia. Jyn had fled Corellia in a hurry, taking only what she could carry, thinking she’d have the rest of the things delivered once she had settled down at the Homestead.

(And thinking that she couldn’t bear to spend another night in the newly single inhabitant flat.)

Waiting to bring everything out was feeling like the best decision she’d made in months.

She stands, and plots her next move.

She forgets that Lah’mu is so infrequently visited by outsiders that there are only two flights leaving the planet today. One due galactic north, the other due galactic south.

The flight north is bound for Sernpidal. The flight south is bound for Dathomir.

The choice is easy.

“Dathomir, huh?” The man who checks her ticket asks. “What’s there?”

Jyn shrugs.

She settles in her seat of the small interplanetary shuttle. It is only her and a handful of others aboard, and they all take care to ignore one another, focusing only on gazing out the window, or working on a datapad, or munching on a snack. Jyn opts for the first of those things, leaning close to the window next to her.

Lah’mu falls away below. It looks blue, a murky blue, and once, the sight of it would send her heart racing, make contentment seep through her veins.

_Lah’mu, and this old house._

_The sea, and the salt, and the man sleeping in the ship outside._

_Home._

On Lah’mu, she had all of those things, except the last, and maybe that was the key difference. Maybe Lah’mu was not home because of the house, and the sea, and the salt. Maybe it was simply not home because Cassian was not there.

_“All the way.”_

_“Yeah. Okay.”_

Unbidden, her fingers fumble at her neck, tugging out the thin cord that rests there.

The kyber crystal blinks in the disappearing sunlight.

It is not hers, is not the one Lyra wore; Cassian has that one. She’d given it to him two years earlier, after they’d married, when she had wanted him to have something of her always. He’d given her a replacement shortly after that, and the exchanging of the kyber crystals had felt almost more momentous than the actual marriage license.

She clings to hers now.

He has never felt further away.

He was home, but he has abdicated that position, and she’s living with that. She is used to home disappearing. She will pick herself up. She will land on her feet.

(The words echo, she has heard them before; she will never remember where.)

It is an idea she internalizes, lets build, this defiant, unapologetic idea: _I will be okay._

_I will find home._

It’s an idea. Or a preface of an idea. A feeling.

Something like hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The news Jyn hears on the holonet are all events borrowed from the Old EU. You can probably understand why Jyn had the most visceral reaction to hearing about Chandrila.
> 
> This story was requested by @leaiorganas, who has just been. The Best. she made several beautiful and heartfelt moodboards for multiple stories of mine, and I am so grateful for the time she took to do so, and all the generosity she has shown me and my work. She had a long-standing "free story" card and she cashed it in, with this prompt: What happened during the four years of Cassian and Jyn's separation?
> 
> it was a prompt I'd gotten before but had never been super motivated to sort out; if only because I suspected the four years were boring. this story is not quite "plot heavy" but it does see Jyn undergoing a pretty serious bit of development, and so it's still important, and that's where I am taking it.
> 
> this story will switch between Jyn and Cassian over the four years. each chapter will include a Cool Ghost Cameo, because I am both Extra, and also because there are lots of instances in the Nonsense where the dead have more to say, and also teach valuable lessons.
> 
> this story will end with Cassian, hearing the news that Shara Bey is dying, which then leads right into the beginning of AMOR FATI.
> 
> please feel free to comment, either here or on tumblr


	2. Year Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The battle was bloody, but mercifully short.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: violence

_Isn’t the moon dark too,_

_most of the time?_

_And doesn’t the white page_  
_seem unfinished_

 _without the dark stain_  
_of alphabets?_

 _When God demanded light,_  
_he didn’t banish darkness._

 _Instead he invented_  
_ebony and crows_

 _and that small mole_  
_on your left cheekbone._

 _Or did you mean to ask_  
_“Why are you sad so often?”_

 _Ask the moon._  
_Ask what it has witnessed._

 _\--_ Linda Pastan,  _Why Are Your Poems So Dark?_

 

* * *

 

 

**7 ABY**

The battle was bloody, but mercifully short.

Cassian stands in what was once a thick, plentiful, and wild forest clearing. It is now the opposite of those things: the grass has been flattened by a thousand heavy footsteps; the mud has congealed and dried and been grounded to dust; the flowers are ripped, petals torn uncaringly here and there; the trees have been burned, branches charred to bits, a few sad twigs left on fire, the only sign of real life, the only sign that life goes on.

Cassian stands in a shower of ash, watching it settle on his jacket with cool disinterest.

Agamar is a small, agricultural world in the Outer Rim, all forests and oceans, warm and dry, with fertile land primed for growth and beauty. Still, the planet is rough, and can be difficult to live on, so the people are hardy, their culture revolving around surviving amidst skyscraping trees and suffocating undergrowth, raising and slaughtering wild animals to suit their needs. There is very little interest in apocalyptic battle, that demolishes the natural ecosystem in the name of territory expansion and national superiority.

In short: Agamar is the kind of world that shouldn’t be a battlefield.

But Agamar is perfectly situated between two hyperspace crossroads, making it a key location for a government or regime invested in remaining in power; and this includes whatever remains of the Empire.

This is what has brought Cassian to Agamar.

He wasn’t in charge of the battle fought over the bright blue skies and on the dark green plains of Agamar; that was Admiral Ackbar, fresh from a key victory against a particularly ruthless Imperial campaign. Agamar is something like a last territory for the Empire; while they still control a few systems, these others are scattered, and more visible, not as densely natural as Agamar is, what with Agamar being considered a backwater world.

But it is still an important one; the loss of such a neatly-positioned planet like Agamar, at the intersection of the Braxant Run and the Celanon Spur hyperlanes, will make it very difficult for the Empire to move their desperately needed supplies and remaining soldiers.

Ackbar and his soldiers swept in, and kicked the lingering Imperials out.

Cassian is called to Agamar on behalf of the Department of Defense. This is a typical trip for him; while he sometimes leads and oversees battles, recently he’s come too late, after the blood has been shed. Cassian knows Leia, and the other leaders of the Department of Defense, are perfectly fine with such a situation; Cassian is valuable, as a leader, as the Head of Intelligence in the Outer Rim, and they don’t want him to die in a random battle on some unremarkable planet.

He stands in a desolate, broken field on Agamar, and looks at the little puddles in the mud around him. His wavering reflection in red blinks back.

(He isn’t fine with waiting behind. He’s a lifelong soldier. He doesn’t like missing the fighting, and the violence. He was trained for it.)

A couple surviving soldiers have finished lining up the bodies of their fallen comrades. The line stretches across the field, and Cassian knows the bodies will have to be moved soon, before dusk falls, before the wild hunters and scavengers of Agamar come out to feast.

(Sometimes, he worries he _lives_ for it.)

Cassian briefly meets with Ackbar, listening to and noting the experienced admiral’s description of the battle. There is nothing particularly noteworthy to report, save for the blow that losing Agamar will be to the Imperial factions.

“You’ve been busy,” Cassian comments, skimming a report that indicates Ackbar’s soldiers have just come to Agamar from another successful battle, on Ord Mantell.

“Much to do,” Ackbar says, in that wheezing voice of his.

And Cassian can certainly agree with that.

The sun is beginning to set, but Cassian still makes the executive decision to walk from Ackbar’s impromptu ground command center to the inn he and the small contingent of Department of Defense staff are staying in, in the capital city of Calna Munn.

He’s sure his soldiers would have preferred taking repulsorcrafts back into town, but Cassian has never turned down an opportunity to walk through beautiful landscapes, and breathe clean air.

“Where are we headed next?” he asks.

Azariah, walking at his side, looks up at him; a difficult thing to do, as even the city streets of Calna Munn are covered in thick green vines, and one has to watch their step.

“You never stop, do you, sir?”

Azariah’s tone is light, and friendly, but the words still cut Cassian.

He can never stop.

He can only do the work, and keep going.

(If he stops, _if he stops_ ; what will he become? Who will he be?)

He hears Jyn’s voice, from what feels like a lifetime ago:

_“What happens to you, at the end of the war?”_

He didn’t have an answer for her then, and he doesn’t have an answer for her now.

Not that she is around to hear it.

Azariah seems to gather that he isn’t going to get much of a response from Cassian, so he clears his throat, and opens a datapad.

“Minister Organa would like you to attend a conference with her on Eriadu,” Azariah says. “But there’s… Hang on, she’s left a note. Uh. The conference isn’t for another two weeks, and so she suggests you… Visit the sector next door?”

Cassian pauses, hesitating under a towering Binka tree.

He recalls his mental map of the galaxy, and realizes the Lahara Sector, which Agamar is a part of, is a neighbor to the Atrivis Sector.

To Fest.

Cassian isn’t surprised Leia is suggesting he go home for a few days.

But he is a little surprised she hasn’t flat-out _ordered_ him to.

“That won’t be necessary,” he murmurs, and continues walking.

Azariah is likely unaware that Cassian is from Fest--it isn’t something Cassian broadcasts, and Fest is unknown to most people from Core Worlds--and so he doesn’t try to cajole Cassian into flying to Fest, to see Travia Chan, or maybe simply the planet he grew up on, the city he used to live in.

The graves of the family he has long missed.

Cassian can’t really think of anything he is less interested in doing.

Azariah speaks again, listing the personnel that will be accompanying them to Eriadu, which soldiers are being recalled back to Chandrila and which are being shipped out to other systems, and Cassian hears the names, and puts the faces to them, when he suddenly feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

He stops.

The five soldiers he’s walking with stop too, and all look at him with confusion.

“Sir?” Azariah asks, hesitantly.

Calna Munn is barely a city, even as the capital of the planet; all the buildings would be considered small by the standards of most capital cities across the galaxy, and the number of inhabitants within city limits cannot top two thousand. It is very quiet, the only noise coming from the soft wind, the swaying tree branches, the occasional chirp and howl of a creature wandering at dusk.

Still, Cassian cannot shake the feeling curdling in his stomach.

Something is wrong.

He looks up, studying the buildings on either side of the street, buildings that cannot be more than three stories tall, all covered in brightly-colored flora, and there is nothing instantly disturbing to be seen, nothing that should set off alarm bells in his head.

The soldiers peer around too, a few unholstering blasters.

Cassian’s instincts have been carefully honed over twenty-eight years, years filled with bombings and battles and terror, and his soldiers trust him completely.

If he thinks something is wrong; something is wrong.

They stand there in the quiet, the soldiers’ boots shifting nervously, and Cassian turns slightly, looking behind them, and from the rooftop of a building down the block, he sees a small flicker of red light, light that is unnatural in the light of the brilliant sunset.

He takes a single step toward the building.

There are two loud _cracks_ , and the next thing Cassian knows, he’s flat on his back on the grassy ground.

He can hear his soldiers clamoring and calling instructions to one another, can hear them firing their blasters in the direction of that rooftop, can hear Azariah’s knees hit the ground, can hear Azariah yelling something, and the responding crackle of a radio.

Azariah’s face leans over him, his pale skin even whiter than normal.

“Can you hear me, sir?” Azariah asks, his voice oddly shaky. “I need you to stay still.”

With that, he presses his hands to Cassian’s midsection.

 _Why are you touching me?_ Cassian thinks, wildly, and then he looks down.

Blood is bubbling up around Azariah’s hands, leaking through his clasped fingers, his palms pressed forcefully against Cassian’s shirt, digging into the space just under his ribs, and Cassian thinks, _Oh._

The red light. The noise.

He’s been shot.

He cranes his neck, and realizes the other shot has landed in the thigh of his left leg, spilling dark blood onto the grass below. Another one of Cassian’s soldiers, a Twi’lek called Xano, is already there, wrapping a torn bit of fabric around Cassian’s leg, to try to stop the bleeding.

Xano glances up at him, offers a hesitant smile. “We’ve got you, sir.”

Cassian blinks.

He’s in shock, he knows.

(He’s seen it before.)

Azariah is speaking again, yelling orders, and Cassian listens to the sounds of running feet, as neighbors who heard the shots, the commotion, spill out of their homes. Yet the noise sounds oddly staticky, like it’s coming from somewhere far away.

A moment later, the pain hits.

He gasps, his back arching with the agony of getting shot (and he’s been shot before, so many times, yet the pain always feels like something unknown, something he cannot prepare for) and he begins to gasp, his breaths coming unevenly, and desperately.

Azariah’s face swims in his vision again, but Cassian cannot hear him.

He fights to slow his breathing, to try and remain as calm as possible.

But he can taste blood at the back of his throat, and he knows that means he’s bleeding internally, can see that he’s bleeding _externally_ , and understands that he could very well bleed out on this street.

_No._

_Not now._

His vision blurs.

Ackbar’s unit has a medical team with them at all times, and it is this New Republic Military medical unit that is called to Cassian’s side, that spirit him away to the only hospital in the city.

Cassian tries and fails to keep track of what is happening.

It is not the first hospital he’s been in as a patient, not by a long shot, and everything that is happening follows his past experiences.

They ask him questions, but his voice has failed him, and so Azariah tries to answer them as best as he can, until he vanishes from sight, barred from accompanying Cassian further into the building. Cassian listens to the doctors shouting at each other, listing off statistics about him, their estimates of how much blood he’s lost, how his heartbeat is too rapid, how the blood he’s choking on indicates massive internal bleeding in his midsection.

He hears one medic suggest they need to be ready to revive him, that his heart is liable to fail with this trauma and overexertion, and stop completely.

And Cassian is overwhelmed with fear.

He is not afraid of of pain, including the pain of being shot, and the pain of losing blood.

He isn’t even afraid of dying.

He’s almost died so many times before.

But the fear, he thinks, is coming from his fear of dying alone.

There’s a young woman nearby, likely a medic in training, and she looks nervously at Cassian, before turning to the older woman next to her, and she basically reads his mind.

“Is there someone we should call?”

 _Jyn,_ Cassian thinks, automatically, instinctively. _Call Jyn._

If he’s going to die; he needs to see her, just one more time.

But even in this state, his brain considers the probabilities and logistics of the situation, and remembers Jyn is halfway across the galaxy, and that even if she were notified right this moment, she would not be able to get to Agamar on time.

If Cassian really is going to die; it will be soon.

Before Jyn can get to him.

“The soldiers in the lobby will know who to call,” a medic says.

 _No, they won’t_.

They will call the Department of Defense on Chandrila, will inform the Department of what has happened to Cassian, and then someone will try to reach Leia Organa.

Cassian doesn’t want to see Leia.

Leia is not who he needs to see before he dies.

But his soldiers; they don’t know about Jyn.

His shirt was quickly torn off by a medic, but the kyber crystal necklace has been left around his throat, and he manages to turn his head, to see it lying next to his face, on the stretcher he is being transported on. His eyes are blurry with tears, but he forces himself to focus, to take in the warm and familiar sight of it, and he tries to draw some comfort from it like he has for the last four years, since Jyn gave it to him.

The kyber crystal is splattered with his blood.

A medic has followed his line of sight, and he sees a hand move, sees it reaching for the crystal--

With a strength he didn’t know he had, Cassian’s own arm moves, and he snatches the crystal in his hand before it can be taken from him. The movement sends his body into another spasm, but he grips the crystal tightly, so tightly the point of it is close to impaling the skin of his palm.

“No,” he manages, and chokes on the blood.

The medic backs off, glancing at the others, but they are difficult to see; black spots are accumulating at the corners of Cassian’s vision.

 _Someone has to tell her,_ he thinks, and then everything stops.

The noise suddenly cuts out, and his eyes slip close.

The last thing he sees is the kyber crystal, peeking out of his clenched fist.

 

* * *

 

The light is very soft.

Cassian blinks.

He feels very calm.

His heart is thudding smoothly, his breathing even, and he lies still, and looks around.

He thinks he’s in a hospital room, going by the medical equipment around him. Nothing is making any noise, and everything is immaculately clean and unstained, surrounded by that soft yellow-white light.

Movement in front of him causes Cassian to turn his head.

There’s a woman standing at the foot of his bed.

Her hair is dark brown, and neat and short, falling just under her chin. Her skin is smooth, lightly flushed, her pink lips turned up in a smile, brown eyes warm and friendly. She’s dressed in a robe that almost blends into the room around them.

“Hello, Cassian,” she says.

He frowns, studying her face, certain he’s seen her before, that he just can’t remember where.

She looks so familiar.

“Who are you?” he asks, and he’s surprised at how even and mellow his voice is, considering--

The memories swarm him, all at once.

_Agamar. The plant-covered streets. The quiet of the sunset. The unsettling feeling. Looking around. Unnatural red light. Two loud cracks._

_Azariah’s shocked face. The medics’ yelling. His fear._

_The kyber crystal in his hand._

He blinks, and suddenly knows who the woman is.

“Lyra.”

Lyra Erso smiles at him in the warm light.

She looks younger than she does in the sole picture Jyn has of her, the hologram image of Lyra with her husband and four-year-old daughter. Her hair is shorter than it was in that image too, and her skin less lined with age.

This Lyra looks infinitely more peaceful.

Cassian swallows, and looks down at his body. His eyes skip past the kyber crystal necklace hanging from his neck, to the white shirt he’s dressed in. He lifts his hands, pressing them to his midsection.

He only feels smooth, warm skin.

No recent blaster shot.

“I’m dead,” he breathes.

Lyra shakes her head.

“No,” she says, still looking at him with that small smile. “Not yet. Not today, Cassian.”

“Where… Where am I?”

Because Lyra is dead.

That much he knows for sure.

“You’re in surgery,” Lyra replies. “But you’ll pull through, and make a full recovery.”

“Oh.”

This is certainly good news, but Cassian can’t quite process it, not with the fact he is having a conversation with the mother-in-law he has never met, who died some thirteen years before he met her daughter.

“Why…” He hesitates, but pushes on. “Why are you here?”

Lyra frowns, turning her head to peer at him. “You called me, Cassian.”

At his blank look, she adds, “You wear my necklace.”

“I do,” Cassian confirms, though Lyra can obviously see it on him.

She smiles again. “So I came.”

Her smile is Jyn’s smile, her hair Jyn’s hair, and the simple sight of her makes him ache more than he thinks any blaster shot could.

“But I’m not dead,” he whispers.

“You aren’t.”

“But you are.”

“Yes.”

“Lyra,” Cassian says, still struggling with the fact he can actually _address her_. “Where are we?”

Lyra looks around the room. “Well, it looks like a hospital.”

“But it isn’t that. Not really.”

“Why not?”

He fights the urge to roll his eyes.

“Because we’re having a conversation,” he says. “And you’re dead, and you say I’m not. So how are we both _here?_ What is this?”

Lyra studies him.

“Have a little faith, Cassian,” she says, as if this is some kind of answer.

“I have faith,” he snaps.

“In all the wrong things,” she murmurs, voice suddenly sorrowful.

He has to look away.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” he says, avoiding Lyra’s eyes.

“You called me here. You tell me.”

“I want to wake up,” he whispers.

Lyra shrugs. “You will. Soon.”

He looks back at her. “Will I remember this?”

“Do you want to remember this?”

“Jyn might like to hear from you.”

“But when would you tell her? You haven’t seen or spoken to her in over two years.”

Silence falls, and it is an overwhelming silence, where Lyra does not seem to breathe or move an inch, and Cassian stills, and looks steadily at her. Lyra’s eyes are dark, a molasses shade of brown, and he can find no trace of Jyn’s ivy green in them. This is what allows him to hold her gaze at all.

“You don’t know me,” he says.

“I’ve heard about you.”

“From who?”

Lyra grins. “Jyn, of course. She talks to me; did you know that? In the hope that I am listening, that I can hear her. I can’t respond, but I… I listen.” Lyra’s expression abruptly falls, turning somber, and while Cassian assumes this is entirely due to her pain at not being able to offer her daughter comfort or encouragement, Lyra’s next words say otherwise.

“She doesn’t speak about you as much as she used to.”

He is entirely unsurprised by this. “That makes sense.”

“You broke her heart, Cassian.”

“I didn’t do anything she didn’t know to expect,” he says, because this is easier than saying the truth, which is, _Yes, I did._

Lyra sighs. “That might be true. But she always hoped for more from you.”

The words are true, and they slash and sting, a dagger to the chest, and it is with that sharp pain that Cassian’s response snaps.

“Is that why you’re here?” he asks. “To tell me things I already know?”

There is a short pause.

And then Lyra walks around the end of the hospital bed, to stand at Cassian’s side. She reaches out, and takes his hand, and he lets her, staring up at her in confusion.

“When you wake up, you won’t remember this,” she murmurs.

“Then what’s the _point--”_

“You won’t remember me,” Lyra interrupts. “But that doesn’t mean I didn’t say something you needed to hear.”

He can’t think of what that could be.

Lyra squeezes his hand.

“Have a little faith, Cassian,” she says, again. “Just a little. At least once more.”

“I _do_ have--”

“In the wrong things,” Lyra says. “Have faith in Jyn. And yourself.”

He doesn’t have a response to that.

Lyra disappears, taking the light with her.

 

* * *

 

Cassian wakes, and feels like he’s been hit by a speeder.

He can hear the hum of a machine near his head, and can hear a slightly more distant chatter of a medical droid. He blinks, and focuses, catching sight of a plain ceiling, and thin tan curtains hanging around him. He’s lying on a hospital bed, and when he looks down, sees thick bandages wrapped around his midsection, and another around his leg.

“General.”

He looks up, and recognizes Azariah, whose face splits in a relieved grin.

“It’s good to see you awake, sir,” Azariah says.

“What happened?”

Cassian’s voice is hoarse, but he’s glad to hear it at all.

“It was an assassination attempt,” Azariah says. “By an Imperial who survived the battle, and lingered on the planet. He must have gotten wind that you were here, and so he camped out on a rooftop on the road leading to the inn.”

“An assassination attempt,” Cassian repeats.

He knows he’s required to travel with at least two soldiers at all times, and while he’s glad to have these soldiers, glad to have their input and glad to candidly chat with them on long flights, he’s somehow managed to forget that the real reason for their presence is to protect him.

Plenty of people have tried to kill him over the last three decades, but they’ve only ever tried to kill him because he was a rebel, an Alliance spy, an officer in the New Republic. No one has ever tried to kill him so _specifically_ before. In a way that can be classified as an _assassination._

Cassian has completed a number of assassinations, and he thinks of those people he killed, their list of crimes, and he wonders what exactly the would-be assassin had thought of him.

“Where is he?” Cassian asks.

“The assassin?” At Cassian’s nod, Azariah says, “Pilato got him, sir. He’s dead.”

“Oh.”

This makes sense, and is unsurprising. The soldiers would have immediately returned fire, and it was likely at least one of their shots would be a fatal one.

“Good,” he says now. “When can I get out of here?”

“Not for another week, sir,” Azariah says, and at Cassian’s look, he adds, “Minister Organa has been informed, sir. She insists you are not to leave the planet until you’ve received written approval from a doctor, and then you are to return to Chandrila.”

That sounds about right.

Cassian sighs, and lets himself lean back against the pillows behind his head.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” he murmurs. “Can you find my doctor for me?”

Azariah nods, and turns to go, but hesitates. He turns back to Cassian.

“Sir…” He begins, and pauses.

“What is it?”

“We had to, um, access your personnel file,” Azariah says, barely able to meet Cassian’s eyes. “Well. I mean. I did, sir. None of these others saw, I thought--”

“Yes,” Cassian presses.

He doesn’t really care if all of them saw his personnel file. He probably should, and he might care more when he isn’t busy trying to recover from two blaster shots and massive blood loss.

“And it’s just, um.” Azariah pauses again, and then blurts: “I didn’t know you were married, sir.”

Cassian stares.

Wherever he’d thought Azariah had been going with this line of questioning; well, it wasn’t that.

“I am,” Cassian says, because there is no point in denying it.

“Your wife is listed as your emergency contact,” Azariah says. “And, well, um, I thought--”

A feeling; some feeling, rises in Cassian’s throat. He doesn’t know if it’s a warm feeling, or a cold feeling, if it means he is excited or terrified or angry or relieved.

“Did you call her?” he demands.

He isn’t sure which answer is the one he fears more.

“No,” Azariah says. “Your prognosis was fairly good, and Minister Organa got in touch pretty quickly, and she advised that we wait until you wake.”

Cassian knows Leia means well, that she intended this to be his choice.

And it probably should be.

But part of him still wishes that either she had not told Azariah her thoughts, or that Azariah had not waited to hear from Leia, and had immediately contacted Jyn, instead.

“Did you want me to inform her, sir?” Azariah asks, frowning, like he can read Cassian’s silence for the hesitation it might really be.

The kyber crystal on Cassian’s chest is still stained red with his blood.

He thinks there is nothing more to be done.

He thinks there is nothing here for Jyn.

“No,” he murmurs. “Don’t call her.”

“Yes, sir,” Azariah says, and finally leaves the room.

Cassian watches him go.

The room is bathed in harsh fluorescent light, and so he leans back, and closes his eyes.

There is an odd feeling in his gut, one he isn’t quite familiar with, what with his particularly good memory.

He feels like he’s forgotten something he was supposed to remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> true story: I forgot to post this chapter. like straight up forgot. about this chapter, and this story. YIKES.
> 
> the Battle of Agamar is an Old EU event. it actually took place in 8 ABY, but I wrote this chapter a year and a half ago (during the Bad Back time) when this story was Sort Of an idea, and it didn't seem wrong to have a Cassian chapter in 8 ABY. but it is now; so let's just pretend the Battle of Agamar (which is no longer canon anyway) happened in 7 ABY.
> 
> I want to comment that this chapter is a good indicator of Cassian's mindset because it sees him not having a lot of choice, and not actively working to make a choice. he goes through the motions. it is out of his hands. getting shot, dying, the question of calling Jyn; these are not active decisions for him, but things he is part of. this is the M.O. for his life, until AMOR FATI, where he begins to make active choices, choices he wants and is happy to make. this is important.
> 
> “Have a little faith, Cassian,” she says, again. “Just a little. At least once more.” <\-- words frequently said to Cassian in the Nonsense, deployed at times like that.


	3. Year Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s here because this is unbelievable. Because orphans should not be hiding in the streets, scrounging for food. Because the fact this is happening makes her unbelievably angry, want to march up to the Capitol and demand action be taken to rectify this wrong, to give these children homes.

 

_She wants something. Something that doesn’t exist._

_She wants something to counter hopelessness._

_She wants the wondrous thing,_

_The star hidden behind the stars._ **  
**

-Hélène Cixous, from "The Perjured City"

 

* * *

  

**8 ABY**

“... Unfortunately, we do not have the critical parts on board with us. Therefore, all passengers will be taken off ship via shuttle, and taken to the nearest port to rebook their flight. We apologize for the inconvenience. If you…”

The last part of the announcement is drowned out by the loud _boos_ that permeate the ship. Jyn manages to not join in, venting her feelings with an eyeroll.

And clenching her fists so hard she feels her nails dig into her palms.

This is what she gets, she supposes, for booking the cheapest flight off Commenor. Commenor had only been a stopping point, originally; that had changed when Jyn found herself with a bit of time, and so she’d wandered the city of Munto and accompanying valley, taking in the beautiful desert, the arid air. She would have liked to have extended her stay further, but a day spent trading for necessary goods highlighted the direness of her finances.

Her year of pointless traveling, of _soul-searching,_ had come to an end. Reality had smacked her in the face.

She was running out of credits.

This was not new territory for her, but it had certainly been some time since Jyn felt like she might not know where her next meal would come from. That was a feeling that had dominated the dark years of her adolescence, the time in between her years with the Partisans and the Rebellion--

She wasn’t going back to that insecurity.

It had been the intimate and painful memory of hunger that had seen Jyn finally checking on all the messages she’d been accumulating from former Alliance friends and comrades. They’d been a steady trickle of words and comments since the war had formally ended, since the New Republic announced itself, as former soldiers returned to civilian life, starting families and businesses with equal enthusiasm. Jyn had read through these messages, sent a few words of well-wishing and support back, but remained largely silent on her own plans and endeavors.

Because what could she say, really?

_My husband and I split up._

_I don’t know where I’m going to go next._

Best to be silent, and let the accomplishments of others talk around her.

A post from an old Pathfinders comrade struck her attention; Komo was close to her age, someone she’d found amusing and oddly cheerful for the war climate, someone who’d joined the war late, and been with her on the ground on Jakku. It seemed that after the war Komo had returned to his homeworld of Taanab, to help run his mother’s Roba farm. He’d done that until she’d died a few months earlier; now he was looking for farm hands to come onboard and work with him, caring for the Roba.

 _Thought I’d put a call out to any wayward soldiers who haven’t landed anywhere just yet,_ he wrote, and Jyn found the wording odd, wondered if maybe he’d heard through someone that she had been doing just that for the past year.

But the pay was good, and a farm on a warm planet covered with mossy jungles and wild animals sounded perfect.

She was a quick yes, and Komo had told her to come as soon as she could.

Which would now be longer than she planned.

Jyn sighs, glaring at the muted gray wall of the passenger ship, as if by glaring she could get the stupid thing up and running again, before giving in and getting to her feet.

She joins the throng of passengers shuffling to the transport shuttle.

“... Where are we, anyway?” A disgruntled H’nemthe asks its companion, a bored-looking man with a shaved head and ring in his nose.

“We made it to the Lesser Lantillian Route,” the man grunts back. “Sounds like the closest planet to us is Onderon.”

Jyn’s heart stops.

She slows.

_Onderon._

She has not been on Onderon in years, not since she was a member of the Partisans, well over a decade ago. Jyn is nearly thirty years old, is a grown woman, but the memories of Onderon weaken her, make her feel like a shattered sixteen-year-old all over again.

She blinks, and sees Saw, his shaved head, his dark eyes.

_“Come here, child.”_

She blinks his voice away. She rolls her shoulders.

One night on Onderon.

It will be fine.

 

* * *

 

As it turns out, it will be more than one night.

 _“Three days?”_ Jyn exclaims, her voice carrying through the bookings room in the Port of Iziz.

The harried ticket salesperson glares at her.

“We weren’t expecting an entire passenger cruiser to require transport,” they snap. “We’re hardly a galactic hub.”

Jyn knows this, quite well.

Still.

“Fine,” she says, already thinking, already making plans; Onderon is not a galactic hub for casual travelers, but if it is the Onderon she remembers, then it’s got a thriving scene of smugglers always looking to trade travel for work, and it’ll get her away quicker.

It is not the first time Jyn has done just that.

The ticket salesperson gives her a ticket, and says they will see her back in the Port in three days’ time.

 

* * *

 

She makes her way to the Malgan Market.

The Market is not the best place to find the kind of work she’s looking for--it’s shockingly straitlaced for Onderon--but it is a place rich with food, and Jyn is hungry. The passenger ship company has paid for her new ticket off Onderon, along with the three nights at a cheap inn, nights that promise near inedible food, and so Jyn decides to treat herself to a proper warm meal. Her finances are looking stable again, now that she has a job lined up, and being on Onderon is only reminding her of hunger and pain and anger and she really could use the mood boost.

She walks through the Market, listening to the calls of merchants selling their wares _(“Staga leather boots, all the way from Ambria! Get them cheap here!”)_ and pedestrians chatting with one another _(“Did you hear Anaxes officially joined the New Republic?”)._ There is something comforting in the loudness, and it takes Jyn a moment to figure out what it is: closeness. She has spent the year on her own, barely talking to anyone, only walking and resting and looking at the stars. Her conversations have been short and to the point, with no one asking her about herself. It was a good thing, she’d decided.

But now, hearing casual human contact; she aches.

She buys a Hot Gizka sandwich, settling at a rickety table outside the food stand to scarf it down. Gizka was one of her favorite types of meats when she was a child, something she would beg and plead the Partisans’ cooks to buy with their hard-earned (and few) credits. Occasionally, one obliged, and she felt like a queen, though she shouldn’t have; Gizka is not close to being a rare or unusual meat, yet the Partisans always acted like getting it was a great feat.

She isn’t sure if they were teasing her, making her feel special, or if it was opposite; that she was so annoying they’d just give in.

This uncertainty, she thinks, defines her time with the Partisans.

After her sandwich, she decides to get dessert, before calling it a day and going back to the sad inn. The bakery is far busier than the sandwich stand, and as she waits in line, she glances around, studying the people of the marketplace.

It’s peacetime, and yet; old habits die hard.

She has only ever known Onderon as wartorn.

It is this paranoia that sends ice rolling down her spine, for there is actually someone watching her; a young boy, maybe five years old, with dark brown hair and tan skin that looks to have not been washed in well over a week. He’s crouched in the mouth of an alley, clothes dirty and bedraggled, and staring at her with a focus she does not like at all.

She narrows her eyes, searching the boy for clues to his allegiance.

She is dressed casually, in black pants and a warm purple jumper, her jacket slung carelessly over her arm, the warmth of Onderon causing her to sweat a bit after spending so much time in the cold of space travel. There is nothing on her that suggests a loyalty to a cause, neither to the Empire or the New Republic, or the Alliance, even, or any of the numerous gangs that run Iziz. She looks just like anyone out to get their evening meal.

As she watches, the boy looks away from her, scanning the next people in line, studying them just as closely as he had studied Jyn.

Jyn frowns, but it is her turn at the counter, and so she steps forward.

The worker has noticed the boy as well.

“Kriffing gremlin,” he grunts, and Jyn stares.

“What?”

He jerks his chin over at the boy, whose attention has focused on the shop the next door over, the spices of food from Kashyyyk wafting through the air. “Street urchin. Trolling for grub. Watch yer pockets, he’ll pick them clean like a Nexu licking its teeth.”

Jyn’s nose wrinkles at the imagery, but she has a more pressing question. “He’s alone?”

“Aye. One of them street kids. We’ve got dozens of ‘em. Pro’lly orphaned by the war, though Force knows whose side he was on. Or if he even had a side. Parents might’a abandoned him too, no war needed.” The worker shrugs. “What’ll it be?”

She buys Warra nut cookies, taking the warm bag in her oddly numb hand.

She had not known there to be a plight of orphans running around the unforgiving streets of Iziz, so many that the sight of one causes only disdain, and not a single hint of compassion. Of course, she had been one such orphan, orchestrating bombings and assisting raids, but she’d had a place to go to at the end of the day, and she’d rarely run a mission on her own as a child. And the Partisans had never recruited a child as young as that boy.

And that had been amid a time of war.

To see such a young child, on his own, in _peacetime;_ Jyn is too numb to feel her rage.

She makes a beeline to the alley, but the boy has disappeared. She frowns, turning slowly on the spot, eyes darting in and out of the various stands and shops. Dusk is settling over Onderon, lights turning on, and she knows it’s very possible the boy has simply slipped into the dark.

But then she feels the softest brush of something against her leg. Anyone other than a war-hardy soldier would likely have ignored it.

Jyn turns, hand extended, and the boy scrabbles back on all fours, abandoning his attempt at getting the credits from her pocket.

Up close, he is even scrawnier and dirtier than she’d thought. There are several holes in his faded shirt, and the knees of his pants are raggedly thin. His hair, though short, is alarmingly tangled, thick and black, and Jyn isn’t even sure if it’s actually black or if it’s the grime that has made it look so.

But the boy’s eyes are undeniably dark, a sharp brown that immediately, and devastatingly, reminds her of Cassian’s eyes.

 

* * *

 

_Cassian turns his head, and smiles at her from under the soft blue scarf wrapped over the lower half of his face, his dark eyes peeking out at her._

_She looks back, and smiles at him._

_You must remember this, she thinks. Remember his smile, and this climb, and the ice, and this feeling. Remember being so happy, just like this._

 

* * *

 

She closes her eyes for a moment.

The boy takes the opportunity to run.

 _“Hey!”_ Jyn yells, wasting no time in chasing after him. He might be scrawny and underfed, but he is fast, using his smaller size to his advantage. Jyn watches the distance between them widen, feels disappointment well in her, until the boy happens to glance back at her, just in time to miss the rolling cart cross the open alleyway.

“Watch out!” Jyn shouts, and the boy turns too late; he runs right into the cart.

Heart in her throat, Jyn sprints to his side, sliding to her knees next to him. The cart’s owner, an older woman with frizzy white hair, is already shouting and cursing in a mix of Basic and some other Inner Rim language Jyn does not know, gesturing wildly at her cart of wares behind her.

“Back off,” Jyn hisses, and the woman glares down at her. “Your things are fine. He’s hurt far more.”

“Keep a closer eye on your son,” the woman spits back.

“He’s not…” Jyn starts, and abandons the attempt, as the woman huffs, grabbing the bridle of the Nerf pulling her cart and trudging away.

Jyn returns her attention to the boy.

He’s blinking blearily up at her, a bright red bruise forming on his temple.

“You okay?” she asks.

The boy does not reply. She hadn’t really expected him to. She sighs, reaches into her pocket, and retrieves the bag of Warra nut cookies.

“Want one?” she asks, taking one out for herself. The boy’s eyes watch the cookie as it leaves the bag and goes to Jyn’s mouth, watching with the focused attention only the starving can create. He watches Jyn chew and swallow, and only then does he nod.

Jyn hands him a cookie.

He eats far more quickly than her, nearly choking on it, and she wonders how long it’s been since he ate last. She reaches back into her jacket, retrieving her canteen. She holds it out, and the boy takes it, guzzling the water just as quickly, spluttering for air.

“Slow down,” she warns. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

A dark eye peeks out at her from a fringe of mangy hair, but the boy slows his feasting.

“Good,” Jyn says, and gives him another cookie. “Want to tell me your name?”

The boy doesn’t speak.

“I’m Jyn,” Jyn offers, thinking back to her time on the streets alone, when everyone had an ulterior motive, when it was hard to figure out how they would act around her.

_Trust goes both ways._

“Syd.”

The voice of the child brings Jyn to the present.

“Syd,” she repeats, and the boy nods. “It’s nice to meet you, Syd. I know the cookies taste good, but you should eat something more substantial. Can I buy you dinner?”

The boy gawks at her.

The open incredulity in his young face tears at her.

“Okay,” he mumbles, and Jyn gets to her feet, holding her hand out.

He takes it.

 

* * *

 

It is so obviously against his better judgment, so obviously causing him anxiety, but Syd allows Jyn to buy him Nyork chowder, and proceeds to practically inhale it. It is only Jyn’s calm requests that he slow down, the fact she gives him plenty of space, the fact she picks at a piece of bread and makes no move to take the chowder away, that allows him to slow his eating. He eats carefully then, slurping up every spoonful, scraping the bowl for errant Nyork, and licking it clean.

Jyn and Syd receive stares from other patrons, a few raised eyebrows, and Jyn glares right back.

She thinks they should all be deeply ashamed for the state of this child.

“When was the last time you ate?” she asks.

Syd shrugs. She doesn’t dare ask if he doesn’t remember.

“Where are your parents?” she tries.

Syd pauses, spinning his spoon around his empty bowl. His eyes are downcast, full of a different kind of hunger. Just when Jyn is ready to move on, to decide he won’t tell her, he sets his spoon down, holds his hands out in two fists, and the uncurls them rapidly, moving them apart.

Jyn recognizes the gesture.

_An explosion._

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs.

Syd shrugs again.

“When was this?” she asks.

Another shrug.

“How long have you been alone?”

The boy holds up one finger.

“Uh huh. And how old are you now?”

Five fingers, as she suspected. Her lips twist in agitation, and she fights it down, knowing Syd will misinterpret her anger.

“Does no one take care of you?”

To her surprise, Syd shrugs.

“What does that mean?” she asks.

“I have friends,” Syd mumbles, and it is the most words he’s spoken to her so far.

“Friends,” Jyn repeats. “Like who? People like me?”

“No.”

She frowns. “Not like me?”

“Younger.”

A cold feeling settles in Jyn’s full stomach.

“... How young?”

 

* * *

 

Young.

Really young.

Two dozen pairs of eyes stare back at Jyn, who can only feel horror. Children, of all races and species, all genders and sizes. The oldest cannot be older than fourteen, and the youngest can barely walk. The only thing uniting them is the shared fear reflected in their eyes, trained on Jyn, who feels entirely unwelcome. She is an adult, wearing clean clothes, has recently been fed; none of these children share those traits.

“Okay,” she breathes. “Okay.”

Syd points at her. “Jyn.”

“What is she doing here?” A Twi’lek girl asks, trying to hide behind her green lekku.

Syd looks up at Jyn, as if to say, _Hell if I know._

“I’m here because…” Jyn tries, and stops.

She’s here because this is unbelievable. Because orphans should not be hiding in the streets, scrounging for food. Because the fact this is happening makes her unbelievably angry, want to march up to the Capitol and demand action be taken to rectify this wrong, to give these children homes.

It is _peacetime._

A moment later, it hits her: that could be exactly why there might be orphans running in the streets of Iziz, alone.

“How many of you lost your homes due to the war?”

The children blink at her, for this is not an answer to the question they had posed to her.

But Syd raises his hand, and slowly, the rest of them do as well.

A dozen little arms, lifted in the air.

Two dozen eyes, filled with fear, grief, and loneliness.

Once upon a time, Jyn was an orphan of Iziz feeling those same exact things.

The only difference was that she had a place to go at the end of the day.

It was not home, but for what it was, it was good enough.

“All right,” she murmurs.

Finally, she answers their question: “I’m here to help.”

 

* * *

 

She gathers their names.

In addition to Syd, there’s Litza, the Twi’lek girl with the green lekku, and her little sister, Ayma. Both their parents were once members of the Partisans. (Jyn only nods, swallowing down her own connection, not daring to ask Litza for her parents’ names.) And then there’s Filip, parents lost due to a bombing in Iziz; Jessi and Simone, parents lost when stormtroopers raided their village.

Meena: Father recruited by Imperials, never returned.

Ralf: Mother killed in an uprising by the village rebels, father murdered by the Imperials who retaliated.

Zally: Parents shot to death in the street by stormtroopers.

Nicca: Mother left to search out the Alliance, never returned; father left to find mother; never returned.

Lizbeth: Parents killed when rebels bombed the Kira Fortress, where Imperial leaders were rumored to be visiting.

Victoria: Parents lost when Imperials re-directed the local river and drowned the village.

Their stories are all different, but also the same: They had families. And then the war came.

Jyn only has two full days with the children, and she resolves to do all she can in that time. She allocates the bare minimum number of credits she needs to get to Taanab, giving the rest to the children, to buy sturdier materials for their poor shelter space, and she rolls up her sleeves and puts up the beams and tarps herself. She takes the children to the market, buying the kind of food that is cheap but will last longer, the children eating up her advice just as eagerly as the actual food.

And then Jyn goes to the Iziz City Hall.

Privately, she’d been hoping there was a miscommunication, that Onderon secretly had a brilliant and efficient human services system, that the dozen children Jyn had stumbled upon were anomalies. But her trip to the government building told her the opposite.

“We don’t have the resources,” the clerk says, with no trace of shame or apology.

“They’re _children,”_ Jyn says.

The clerk raises an eyebrow, as if to say, _Yeah. I know._

“You… You _make_ the resources,” Jyn snaps.

The clerk shakes her head.

“Sometimes,” she says, “We can’t save everyone.”

 

* * *

 

_“I can’t go to Chandrila,” Jyn says, and she needs him to understand this. “I just… I’m so done, Cassian. I’m done with the war, with… with fighting, even. I just want to go home.”_

_He nods, still avoiding her eyes. “You should get to go home, Jyn. I understand.”_

_“You should get to go home, too.”_

_He looks up at her then, and shakes his head._

_“No,” he says, and there’s a wry smile on his face. “No, I shouldn’t. It’s… peacetime isn’t for me. I’m not meant for it.”_

 

* * *

 

“...Miss?”

Jyn blinks.

Cassian’s face, his sad smile, his resigned shrug, disappear.

It is only the clerk, this office, this place, this disappointment.

“You okay?” The clerk asks.

Jyn clears her throat.

“Yes,” she says.

_Sometimes, we can’t save everyone._

_I know,_ Jyn thinks, and leaves.

 

* * *

 

Jyn makes her way back to the hovel.

The sun has started to set over Iziz, and the shadows are long in the streets. The acrid smell of smoke stings the air, and Jyn wrinkles her nose.

She walks slowly, dragging her feet.

She had hoped to return to the children with good news, promises of imminent saviors, of physical houses, of loving and awaiting arms. She doesn’t know why she’s surprised to not have that kind of news.

If Jyn is familiar with anything, it is the feeling of abandonment.

She is pulled from her hollow thoughts by the sound of running feet.

Coupled with the smell of smoke, a smell that is only intensifying, Jyn feels her muscles locking, her spine straightening, her eyes widening.

_A battlefield._

There is no scent or hint of dynamite on the wind, no gasoline staining the road, but Jyn is prepared to come around the corner and see the plume of midnight black smoke indicative of a bombing. This is Onderon, this is Iziz, this is Saw Gerrera’s world.

Except it’s not. Not anymore.

Jyn knows this in her gut, and her head.

She rounds the corner, and while there is smoke spilling into the hazy sunset sky, the smoke is grayer than blacker, puffy rather than billowing. Jyn watches the ash fall around her head, little wisps of ugly snow, settling on her arms and shoes.

Finally, she looks up.

The empty and derelict house at the end of the street is on fire, flames stretching in all directions, so brilliant they are almost painful to look at. Both buildings on either side are also on fire, the alleys in between ominously masked by smoke dark as curtains.

The children live down one of those alleys.

She is off like a shot, running so quickly she doesn’t hear her bag hit the ground. She runs single mindedly towards the smoke and the flames, yelling as she goes, “Call for help! There are _children_ inside!”

For there are people outside, milling in the streets, watching the buildings burn; but that is all they are doing. Milling. Standing around.

No one makes so much as a single step at Jyn’s announcement of children.

She does not slow to vent her disgust.

She sprints into the smoke, and the alley.

The smoke is even thicker here, the walls creating an awful tunnel, funneling the air and ash inside. Jyn strips her jacket off, wrapping it around the bottom half of her face in an attempt to create a bubble of clean air. She scrambles in her pockets, finding her penknife, that thing she never leaves anywhere without. The little light on its end is near useless in the alley, but it’s something, and she moves by its tiny beam.

“Syd?” she calls. “Lizbeth? Ralf? Jessi?”

Through the swirling smoke, she glimpses something: a pale hand, waving.

The gravel of the alley bites at her knees.

Simone coughs directly into Jyn’s eyes, but all Jyn can feel is relief.

“You’re okay, you’re okay, baby,” she croons, carefully tugging the neck of Simone’s shirt up to cover her little mouth. “Are you alone? Is anyone else here?”

Shakily, Simone manages to point to her left. Jyn follows the trembling finger, and spots a dark doorway, shaded in smoke. Jyn can barely make out the shape of stairs.

“S-Syd,” Simone stutters, and Jyn thinks, _Of course._

“C’mere,” she mutters, and takes Simone’s hand. Simone lets herself be pulled up, lets herself be tugged out of the alley. Jyn takes a few staggered, deep breaths of fresh air, before turning back to Simone.

“Medics should be here soon. Let them check you out, okay?”

She only waits for Simone to slowly nod, and then she’s back in the alley.

The smoke is even thicker, Jyn’s light even feebler, but she throws herself forward anyway. She returns to the spot she found Simone, and then moves to the doorway. The smoke lessens as she climbs, and her breaths come in less cloying, her throat slightly less scalded by the air.

The building is abandoned and derelict, wood dry and grainy, making it a fertile space for a fire. Jyn can see flames out of the corners of her eyes, and she has no idea where or how the fire began, only that it is climbing, and she needs to find Syd soon.

She yanks her jacket off her face.

“Syd?” she yells. “Syd?”

The flames are brighter. Jyn squints.

“Syd?”

The tiniest sound, barely discernible over the crackling flames, the quivering wood of the building: “Jyn?”

Her heart falls as a beam does behind her.

Syd is a trembling ball on the ground. He’s got his thumb in his mouth, the most innocent, childish move imaginable, eyeing Jyn from behind a fringe of dark hair.

She races to his side.

“I’ve got you,” she breathes.

She watches the flames reflected in Syd’s brown eyes.

She gets him up, wrapping him in her arms. He clings to her neck and shoulders, tucking his face into her collarbone, his tears cold next to the heat of the room on her skin. She turns, and begins to walk back to the staircase.

Two things happen at once.

The ceiling above begins to cave, and Jyn takes a quick step to the side, just as a beam falls towards her.

She moves without thinking, moving using some innate instinct in her she never knew she had.

Syd sails through the air. He falls hard onto the floor, scrambling upright, managing to prevent himself from toppling down the stairs. He stares in horror at Jyn, who’s been separated from him by the fallen beam.

 _“Go!”_ she yells.

She watches him mouth her name.

“I’ll find another way out,” she says. _“Go!”_

His fear overwhelms him, and he heeds her command. He disappears down the staircase. Jyn is left in the flaming room, alone.

“Okay,” she breathes. “Okay.”

She looks around, taking in the trembling building, the ash falling thick and heavy, incinerated by the flames from which it came. She’s sweating profusely, but doesn’t dare take off any layers, for fear of leaving her bare skin exposed to the fire.

The smoke burns her eyes, sending tears spilling down her cheeks.

Her throat aches.

The flames are burning brighter and brighter, almost painfully bright, like a sunset, like a--

_“Your father would be proud of you, Jyn.”_

Cassian’s voice in her head, here, now, at the end.

_The end?_

She takes a single step, the house trembles, and the shaky wood floor underneath Jyn gives away.

 

* * *

 

The sunlight is oddly muted.

Jyn blinks at it, frowning at the way it seems to flicker, falling through air that is a pale gray, shadows darkening the floor below. Every now and then, a soft breeze through the open window causes a flurry of ashes to spill into the burned room, and Jyn watches the ashes fall like a dilapidated snowfall. Scorch marks litter the floor, stopping just before Jyn’s feet.

A soft tutting noise causes Jyn to turn, and realize she is not alone in the burned room.

The woman is a little taller than Jyn, with warm brown skin, and a narrow nose. She’s dressed plainly, in a light gray shirt and matching pants, her feet bare like Jyn’s. Her hair is short, brushing her chin, in waves of wild, beautiful black curls. She turns her head, and she’s young, younger than Jyn by a decade or so, just a teenager. She grins, and laugh lines crinkle the edges of her eyes; eyes that are big, and dark brown, and so painfully familiar.

“Serafima?”

The woman--the girl--laughs, loudly, turning her head to cackle up at the blackened ceiling.

“I look a lot like her,” she says, once she’s gotten a hold of herself. “Close, but no cigarra.”

And Jyn knows.

“Nerezza.”

Cassian’s beloved older sister winks at her. He’d always described Nerezza as looking a lot like Serafima, and himself as also looking like Serafima, but Jyn thinks if anything, it is Nerezza who looks like a female version of Cassian. They have the same high cheekbones, the same thin frame, the same long fingers, same narrow nose. But Nerezza’s hair is thicker and curlier, her mouth fuller, and her nose distinctly straight.

There is also a clear glint of humor in her eye that Jyn has never seen in Cassian.

Jyn has to look away.

“Am I dead?”

“Not even a little,” Nerezza returns, oddly cheerfully. “But you do need to rest for a little bit.”

Jyn blinks.

_Smoke spilling into the sky._

_Simone, trembling._

_Flames licking a dark staircase._

_Syd’s scared eyes._

_A caving floor._

_“Your father would be proud of you, Jyn.”_

“Right,” Jyn says.

“Running into a burning building to save a child,” Nerezza muses. “What a brave, selfless creature you are.”

Jyn does not care for being called a _creature._ “Why are you here?”

“You needed someone who was like Cassian, but was also not like him.” Nerezza’s eyes slide to her, and the affection is clear, and kind. “Gabriel is automatically a no-go. Zeferino is…” She trails off, eyes staring in the middle distance, fading slightly. Jyn follows her line of sight but sees only the charred wall, the hazy sunlight.

“Serafima would have just depressed you, she’s too much like him,” Nerezza continues, the jovial tone returning to her so quickly it might never have left. “So that leaves me. I was his favorite, you know.”

“I know,” Jyn says, because Cassian wears his love and grief for his sister like a badge of honor; a badge with a black band wrapped around it.

“I _raised_ that boy,” Nerezza says, and though she begins the sentence with ferocity, it tapers off, turning to uncertainty.

Jyn frowns.

Nerezza’s eyes have turned to the room, to the black soot under their bare feet, to the awful outlines of fire on the wall, to the open window, the slitted sunlight, the ash that still falls. She looks at it like she is looking at something else entirely, something out of reach, and apprehension rolls through Jyn.

“Cassi,” Nerezza tries, and stops.

Jyn glances around the burned house, half-expecting Cassian to appear.

The other half of her knows he will not.

Nerezza crosses the room, and kneels on the hard wood. She reaches forward, and scoops up a handful of ashes, watching the gray slide through her fingers.

“This is my legacy,” she says, and Jyn is not sure Nerezza is even speaking to her anymore. She watches Nerezza, as she touches the ashes, making nonsense shapes of them, creating paths branching around the floor, from the hazy window.

“What is _your_ legacy, Jyn?” Nerezza asks.

Jyn snorts. “I don’t have one.”

“No?” Nerezza asks, eyes still on the ash.

Jyn shakes her head, though with slightly less certainty than she would have expected.

“But as we have determined, you are not dead,” Nerezza says. “So you still have time to make your own legacy. A legacy that is not ashes. A legacy that is not a brother who never learned how to be happy.”

“Cassian--”

“Is not your problem to fix,” Nerezza finishes. “He is not your story, Jyn. Not your legacy. You are your story, and you get to design your legacy.”

“I’ve never thought about my legacy,” Jyn says.

“Because you never thought you had time,” Nerezza says. “But you do now, Jyn. Consider: What do you do with your time, and what do you make of your legacy?”

Jyn has inched closer to Nerezza, as if hearing the girl’s words more loudly might help her find meaning. Up close now, she sees that Nerezza has not been drawing random designs in the ash. Rather, she has drawn a shape Jyn would recognize, even in this simple incarnation.

A house.

Jyn frowns, and looks into Nerezza’s brown eyes, eyes so familiar and so pained.

“Don’t burn it down,” Nerezza says, and the light goes out.

 

* * *

 

The doctor tells Jyn that she’s had visitors.

When he steps aside, Jyn sees the children hiding just on the other side of the door. They are just as scruffy and dirty as ever, and the fear in their eyes is familiar. What is different are the smiles that emerge on their faces when they see Jyn, smiles that turn hesitant when Jyn’s response to them is to burst into tears.

“Do you have any other family we can call?” the doctor asks, eyes flickering from Jyn to the street children and back.

Jyn blinks, and gets a glimpse of brown eyes.

She shakes her head, and the eyes disappear.

“This is it,” she says, and the children go to her.

 

* * *

 

The burning building, the building Syd took refuge in until the flames got too hot, the building Jyn ran into to save him, the building a small group of firefighters burst into to find Jyn; as it turns out, it should have been condemned and fenced off years earlier.

It had been the site of an earlier arson, the work, Jyn is told, of the Partisans.

She acts very coolly when she gets this news, from a harried-looking police officer in her hospital room.

The owner of the building died in the fire then, and the building reverted back to Iziz, and the city failed to do anything with it, including lock it down.

“So…” Jyn says, hesitantly.

“So,” the officer grunts, “You are entitled to compensation for your injuries.”

It isn’t much--and no one tries to act like it isn’t--but it’s credits, credits Jyn didn’t have before. The city even offers to arrange Jyn’s travel off Onderon.

She declines.

She has a different inquiry.

“The building,” she says. “What happens to it now?”

 

* * *

 

The building had been gutted over its two fires, so now all that remains is a skeleton structure. Jyn takes the credits she has been rewarded, and buys the place. She gets a lot of strange looks for this move, and even more for the small herd of children that follow her around.

She starts building the place back up again, hiring the cheapest labor she can find.

“They’re kind of creepy, aren’t they?”

Jyn rolls her eyes, turning to the carpenter at her side, holding up one end of the wooden paneling that will hopefully be the wall between the kitchen and the front room. He’s looking past her, to the street, where Nicca and Lizbeth are eyeing them.

“We’re building their new home,” Jyn says. “They have a right to watch.”

“Sure, but they’re just being so… _intense_ about it. Like I’m doing it wrong.”

She can’t help but laugh. “Hell, maybe you are. What’s your name, again?”

“Edvar, ma’am.”

He’s at least ten years younger than her, she thinks, with long black hair tied back and smooth black skin.

“Kriff, don’t call me _ma’am,”_ Jyn grumbles. “That makes me feel so old.”

“Well, you’re running this show,” Edvar replies. “I’m just building this place.”

She considers him.

His shirt is rumpled, boots scuffed, but his smile is friendly, and as she watches, he turns to wink at Nicca, who cracks a shy smile back.

“Edvar,” Jyn says, “How would you like a new job?”

 

* * *

 

Though everyone has their own bed, the children all pile in Jyn’s room on their first night in the house.

All of their things, the dishes, the furniture, the blankets; everything is second hand, but it is _theirs,_ and that is all any of them have ever wanted. The items came courtesy of the people of Iziz. Jyn is unsure if people were eager to donate because they wanted to get rid of their junk, or if it was because the opening of a new orphanage for war orphans was a good cause to get behind.

It doesn’t really matter, she thinks. 

Edvar peeks in, taking in the sight of Jyn, trapped on the bed with a dozen children curled around or near her.

“I’m locking up,” he says. “I’m going to run to the pharmacy in the morning and get the vaccines. Need anything while I’m out?”

“Check in with Human Services,” Jyn replies, “And see what the status of the grant from Vena is, and when they might be sending some of their kids over. And then run by the Port, I’ve got a shipment of…. Well, it’s better you don’t know.”

They have some credits to run the orphanage, but not nearly enough to get everything they need. Luckily, Jyn has a long history of smuggling goods in and out of places, and no qualms in doing so if it’s for a good cause.

And feeding and sheltering orphans; that’s the _best_ cause.

“It’s under the name Liana Hallik,” she tells Edvar. “It’s supposed to be coming in tomorrow, but you know what the Port is like…”

“Hallik, got it.”

“Also, see if you can track down the contact info for the superintendent of Iziz schools,” Jyn says. “Some of the kids are behind, and I want to get them caught up as soon as possible. Oh, and the contact info for whoever runs tours of Ommin’s fortress, I think the kids would really enjoy a field trip there.”

Edvar’s smile is soft. “That it?”

Jyn smirks. “For now. I’ll call you if I think of anything. And you’re taking the afternoon shift, yeah?”

“Yes, Captain.”

Jyn rolls her eyes. “I’ve never been a Captain.”

“I know,” Edvar says. “But maybe you should have been.”

He gives her a half-hearted salute, and then turns, closing the door behind him.

Jyn sits back in the bed, and Syd immediately rolls into her.

He looks warm and peaceful, like the child he is finally learning to be.

The galaxy is full of war orphans. Millions of them. And not all of them can be saved.

For some, it is too late.

_“Peacetime isn’t for me. I’m not meant for it.”_

Jyn looks at the ceiling, and lets herself feel the grief, and the loss, and the old, familiar heartbreak.

 _I can’t save you,_ she thinks. _And that’s my biggest regret._

She looks down at Syd, curled into her.

_But I can save him. I can save them. And I think that will be enough._

Enough for Jyn Erso, ex-Partisan, war veteran, abandoned wife.

Enough to make a home.

“Good night,” she whispers to a sleeping Syd.

 _Goodbye,_ she thinks, to a Cassian who is half a galaxy away.

She will always miss him, and she will always love him. She can’t help it.

But these orphans, this house, this life; it’s more than she ever expected to have. It’s a goal, it’s a dream, it’s something of a legacy.

 _(A legacy,_ she thinks, and what a strange thing that is.)

It is doing the correct thing, and the right thing. It’s forging a kinder universe than the one she had. It’s being a hero for those who have never seen anyone fight for them.

It’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Italicized passages from YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS and AMOR FATI. Komo and Edvar reprise their roles in AMOR FATI.
> 
> A lot of the Nonsense was about choice, and making a choice. So having so much happen due to coincidence (the ship breaking down by Onderon, the warehouse burning down to become the orphanage) was an interesting change for me. It raises the question of what is inevitable, which also comes up in the Nonsense a lot. It suggests that all these things had to happen to Jyn, to get to where she is "meant" to be. AKA: amor fati, or "love of one's fate."
> 
> Nerezza telling Jyn that Cassian is not her story was a kind of poke at me, who originally only wrote Jyn's perspective as a way to examine Cassian from an outside perspective. started from the bottom, now we here, etc.
> 
> it is also an indictment of Nerezza, for Nerezza was Cassian's story for the first thirteen years of his life. And Nerezza is "responsible" for a lot of Cassian; for what he values, how he thinks, what he expects of himself. Nerezza knew this in GRAY AREAS, but never reckoned with it. in the burned house, she starts to acknowledge the loss.
> 
> Margaret Atwood's excellent collection MORNING IN THE BURNED HOUSE influenced this. the poem "Down" was a great influence on the Nonsense: "What are you supposed to do / with all this loss?"
> 
> The answer, for Jyn and Cassian: Build something out of your ashes.
> 
> Syd being Jyn's introduction to the war orphans is a kind of "foreshadowing" to Fima. She is never surprised that her child is a boy. she is constantly creating a home for boys with sad brown eyes.


	4. Year Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You and me.

_ I know falling _

_ to my knees still means something. _

_ The basin of cool water still answers _

_ the moon. Here you are. Here _

_ you have always been. _

 

-Wendy Xu, from "Auditorium Poem"

 

* * *

 

**9 ABY**

Poe’s laugh is a peal of sound, with absolutely no sense of rhythm or subtlety, and Cassian loves him for it.

“Get back on,” he says, and Poe scrambles out of the lake, tripping and slipping on the soft wet mud that lines the shores. His dark curly hair is flattened to his head, his seven-year-old body all pudgy limbs and soft angles, and Cassian can barely hold the swing still enough as Poe jumps on.

“Ready?”

“Yes, Cass!” Poe yells, very loudly, considering this lake is quite empty and there is absolutely no need to yell.

Poe only yells because he wants to, because he can, because he is seven years old and on his version of Yavin 4 there is no enemy listening for his movements from the surrounding jungle. The bird calls are almost lazy, the wind only a gentle breeze. It is like danger has never touched this moon.

But it has; Cassian carries the trauma of Yavin 4 in his bones.

He is immeasurably grateful that Poe never has, that Shara and Kes have learned how to deal with their wartorn time on Yavin 4 before the Alliance fled from it, learned how to deal with it so well they returned and made a home here. Because Yavin 4 is beautiful; the jungles are lush and green, the lakes and rivers so blue and clear, the air crisp and clean. It is wild and breathtaking, yet returning to it always leaves Cassian a little wary.

Luckily, he has a seven-year-old to look out for, and take his mind off of things.

He grips the swing, and pulls back, Poe cackling with glee, until Cassian is holding him and the swing over his head. “Ready?”

“Ready!” Poe shouts, a shout that turns into a delighted shriek when Cassian lets the swing go. Poe swings high, high over the lake below, waiting until he is at the very tip of his arc before letting go, plummeting to the cool water below.

Moments later, Poe resurfaces, laughing and gasping, and Cassian grins back.

They spend another half an hour out there, Poe swinging, Cassian launching him, Poe falling into the water. They only head back to Kes and Shara’s house when the sun dips over the horizon, and the lake water turns chilly. Cassian carefully wraps the towel around Poe, and then takes his hand, leading him through the undergrowth.

“Can we come back tomorrow?” Poe asks, brushing dripping hair out of his eyes.

“I don’t think so,” Cassian replies. “Don’t you have school?”

Poe makes a noise Cassian would best describe as a _tcha!_

He takes it as a _Yes._

 

* * *

 

Kes and Shara smile at the state of their tired, soggy son. Kes takes a step closer to Poe, and dramatically gasps, throwing his head back and declaring, _“You stink!”_ causing Poe to erupt with a mixture of amusement and indignation. Kes picks Poe up, throws him over his shoulder, and declares he needs a bath. Poe’s snorts of laughter soften as he disappears with his father to the fresher.

Shara picks up the kettle from the stove. “Tea, Cassian?”

“I’d love some.”

“I’ve only got Sernpidalian tea, I’m afraid,” Shara says.

“What makes it Sernpidalian?” Cassian asks, joining Shara at the kitchen counter. She has retrieved a small ceramic container from the pantry, ovular shaped, painted white with dark red flowers running along its sides. Unbidden, Cassian finds himself reaching out, and brushing the side of the container.

When he blinks, his hands are his mother’s, carefully sculpting a vase in their home on Fest.

He blinks again, to find Shara watching him, brown eyes sympathetic.

He clears his throat, and gently lifts the lid of the container.

Inside are dozens of flower petals. The flower petals all seem to be the same shape and size, and only appear to differ in color: red, blue, purple, pink, and white.

“The flowers,” Shara says, in response to his question. “Grown exclusively on Sernpidal.”

“Do they all taste different?” he asks. “The colors?”

Shara laughs. “Fair question. But no. They are the same _type_ of flower, only different in color. Which color would you like?”

“Surprise me,” Cassian suggests.

She brews him a tea with the red flowers, making one with the blue for herself. The sun has since set, but the air has not quite turned unbearably cool yet, and so they take their tea out to the yard, sitting in chairs, facing the tall tree that dominates the backyard.

Cassian thinks the tree has grown massively since he last saw it, a couple years earlier. What Shara claims had been a sapling when she planted it four years earlier has grown into a behemoth, thick and strong and looking like it has always been in this spot. Vaguely, Cassian understands the tree is Force-sensitive, that Shara had been gifted the tree by none other than Luke Skywalker, who’d entrusted her with finding it a good place to be planted. She’d picked her yard; the tree has flourished.

Sometimes, Cassian turns his head, and thinks the tree is emitting a soft, turquoise glow. But when he looks back, it’s just a normal tree.

He doesn’t intend to investigate it.

“Poe had a great time today,” Shara notes, sipping her tea.

Cassian nods. “I had a great time, too.”

“He loves spending time with his Uncle Cass.”

“His Uncle Cass loves spending time with him, too.”

Shara grins.

“Poe greatly enjoys wandering around here,” she says. “He loves swimming in the lake, splashing whoever he is with, challenging others to breath-holding contests. He loves climbing in the trees, even when his knees get scraped up; my boy will have scars on his knees, and all his friends will think he has had a rough, awful life.”

Cassian smiles, but Shara isn’t done.

“I’ve been teaching him how to fly,” she continues. “He loves it, almost seems to _live_ for it. He loves being high up, and going fast. He loves diving, and executing a hairpin turn. He is daring; but only because he wants to be. He’s got a very soft, easy mindset. And don’t think I am calling my son an idiot, because I’m not. I only mean that he knows what he wants, and goes for it, and doesn’t question the motives or desires behind it. Almost a one track mind.”

“Sounds like a kid,” Cassian comments.

Shara eyes him.

“All this to say, sometimes Poe reminds me of you.”

He blinks.

“That might just be the strangest thing you’ve ever said about me, Shara Bey.”

The idea that Poe, sweet, energetic, vibrant, delightful, _Poe,_ could in any way, shape, or form remind Shara of _him,_ Cassian, sad, violent, weary, ruthless, _Cassian;_ it is inconceivable to the point of cruelty. An insult to Poe, definitely. Maybe some kind of compliment for Cassian, possibly.

But Shara does not intend it as such.

She smiles, but it’s a somber smile. “What are you doing, Cass?”

“Drinking Sernpidal tea here with you,” Cassian replies. “Listening to the night on Yavin 4. Thinking that you might--”

“I _mean,_ what are you _doing, Cassian Andor?”_

His lips twist, swallowing the answer he knows is the truth, knows Shara is expecting. There is no use in playing naive; they know the answer to Shara’s question.

“I don’t need you to criticize my choices,” he says, quietly. “I do that plenty enough on my own.”

“I am hoping _my_ criticism might have some effect.”

“It does. But maybe not in the way you are hoping.”

Shara sighs, deeply. “You have never needed any additional evidence to hate yourself.”

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.

“We saw Jyn, last year,” Shara says.

Cassian looks down at the mug in his hands. He watches the deep red petals, floating silently in the dark water, like blood in an ocean. Though the mug is hot, his hands feel very cold indeed.

“How is she?” he hears himself ask.

“Much better,” Shara replies, and leaves it at that, dangling her next words like a hunting snare, waiting for Cassian to stick his neck through, to be hanged on his own selfish greed for the wife he has lost.

He has a novel’s worth of questions he would like to ask Shara.

_What do you mean by “much better”? Better than what?_

_Is she eating well? Does she have friends? Where is she living? Is she comfortable? Does she still have nightmares? Does she keep in touch with anyone else? Is she still the brightest thing anyone has ever seen? Does she still carry a dagger on her at all times?_

_Is she in love with someone else? Is she living with another man?_

_Does she ever think about me?_

He can still see the note he left on their bed, the night he walked out of their apartment.

His contact info at the Department of Defense on Chandrila, and the number for his personal line, though he knew Jyn had long had it memorized. 

He had thought about adding something else--a short note--but there had been nothing he could think of left to say. He knew no apology would be good enough, no words strong enough to convey how sorry he was about them, how they ended. Jyn, sitting in the kitchen as he packed, had heard it all already.

He is constantly feeling torn between two irreconcilable feelings: one, his wish that Jyn had listened when he told her he’d put the war before her, one day; and the other, his most selfish relief that she did not listen, that he had had six years with her.

As these thoughts swirl in his mind, a soft rain begins to fall.

Cassian and Shara are sheltered under the eave, and so they sit, and watch the rain, and listen to the soft sounds it makes as it hits the leaves, the grass, the house.

Or, at least, Cassian is; Shara is watching him. Fondly, and a little sadly.

Jyn used to watch him the same way.

“What do you want, Cassian?”

In the weeks before their separation, Jyn watched him with something closer to longing, a thing that turned into resignation.

“The things I have always wanted,” he murmurs.

A peaceful galaxy. Imperialists, annihilated. Revenge. Forgiveness. Redemption. Calm.

Serenity, to answer his cruelty.

He can see it all, see these desired events lined up, sees how one can influence and catalyze the next, an endless line leading to him--

Home. Restful.

Happy, even.

But that is so blurry it’s barely discernible. His thin hope is the only thing holding that image together.

“The things you’ve always wanted,” Shara muses. “Same as when you were Poe’s age, I imagine.”

It’s true; Cassian has spent his whole life living in a war he has dreamed of winning.

Now, Cassian glances at her. Her smile is a little wry.

“As I said: Poe reminds me of you.”

 

* * *

 

Cassian only allows himself to search for Jyn when he’s at work.

It gives him a brief and specific window in which to comb New Republic records for any trace of Jyn Erso; as an insomniac with a history of obsessive thinking, he knows he’d be totally susceptible to spending entire nights searching for her otherwise. He suspects that he would never be able to close that particular door after opening it. But allowing himself to look for her from his office at the Department of Defense, a place where he is frequently so busy he doesn’t even have time to think about if he’s eaten today or if he has any clean laundry at his flat; it’s a luxury he can afford.

He sits at his desk now, and looks at the blank screen before him.

It blinks back at him, a massive database opened before him, trillions of records, of the long dead and the newly born, the monstrous and the heroic, the socialites and the recluses. It is not nearly a complete database, and relies on one very key and irritating problem: It only holds records for residents of systems who have officially joined the New Republic.

Cassian has no idea if Jyn is on such a world.

He spends plenty of time hearing about how _this_ planet or _that_ planet haven’t officially joined, despite already receiving plenty of the benefits of being part of the New Republic, like easier trade regulations and more open ship routes (he can reel off the benefits with ease, even though trade and business is not his area of work.) Many of these worlds believe joining the New Republic officially is a formality; and it kind of is. It’s emblematic of a galaxy united under democracy.

(This is why Cassian likes to think most systems come to join the New Republic.)

He, similarly, has no idea what name Jyn might be living on that world. If she’s stuck with her real name or returned to an old alias, or even a new alias. Her real name is most preferable, and an old alias might be searchable, but a brand new alias; that is where he will lose her. He could find her a million times and never know it.

The thing about the New Republic database is that it is very new and very temperamental, and Cassian learned early on in his search that searching for _Jyn Erso_ in the entire database was a bad idea; it nearly fried the system and he had to wait a week for tech to come through and repair it for him. He’s not sure if this is because _Jyn Erso_ is a weirdly common name (unlikely) or simply because the New Republic spent its very first years (and is still really in its very first years) operating on a shoestring budget, and the software itself is not meant to deal with this kind of traffic.

So he’s been looking system by system.

For the last three years.

The galaxy is very big.

He knows for sure she isn’t on Lah’mu. It’d been his very first guess when he’d first began this search, and the results had returned fast and disappointing. And surprisingly; Lah’mu was more of a home to Jyn than anywhere else. She’d behaved like Lah’mu was where she would go at the end of the war. To not find her there made him realize how difficult this search was really going to be.

Made him realize that maybe he didn’t _know_ her anymore.

Shara and Kes know where Jyn lives now. While they’d never visited her, she had visited them. Cassian knew that if he asked they would tell him. But he also knew they’d tell Jyn that he’d asked, and they’d told him. And he wasn’t prepared for the fallout of that choice, a choice he knew really should be Jyn’s choice.

It was certainly creepy, to use the database of the New Republic in this way. But he needed to know where she was. He needed to know Jyn Erso was living in the galaxy. Needed that little bit of knowledge, that system name. 

The only sliver of Jyn’s life he felt he deserved to know at all.

Cassian looks away from the screen, turning to the map of the galaxy on his wall, zoning in on the last system he’d checked (Karideph) to the next one he had to search (Elrood). It wasn’t a system he was familiar with, on the far side of the Outer Rim, but was, as always, worth a shot, and so he turned--

_Knock._

He looks up.

Leia stands in the doorway. Her face is utterly composed, giving no hint as to what’s brought her to his office.

“Evening, Leia,” Cassian says, sitting back in his chair.

“What are you still doing here, Andor?” Leia asks, frowning a little now. From the window in the wall behind her, the setting sun creates an interesting shadow of the elegant hairstyle she’s sporting.

“Work,” Cassian replies with a shrug.

_Going home means not looking for Jyn._

“Hmm,” Leia says, but there is no reason for her to berate or doubt Cassian, lifelong work-addict, and so she shrugs it off. “What’s on your schedule next week?”

“Could you not have asked an aide to find out for you?” Cassian asks, but he’s already turning, rifling through the seemingly-thousands of documents that make up his life at the Department of Defense. “I was going to make a visit to Ylesia.”

Leia frowns. “What do you want to see the Besadii Clan for?”

“I’ve got a contact on Teth who can introduce me,” Cassian says. “I think a formal introduction to the New Republic is beneficial.”

“The Besadii are slave traffickers.”

Cassian gives her a dark look. “I didn’t say I want to _befriend_ them. I was only thinking that the Empire had much more to offer them than the New Republic does, and we need to make as good an impression as we can. Especially with you in charge of things here.”

Leia folds her arms. “What do you mean by _that,_ Andor?”

“When I told my contact on Teth your name, he said, _‘The Huttslayer is not welcome in Hutt Space.’”_ Cassian raises his eyebrows. “Seems like your reputation precedes all of us, there.”

There is a hint of amusement, and gratification, in Leia’s dark eyes. “Too bad.”

“A pretty stellar title,” he continues. “Much more interesting than _minister,_ or _princess.”_

“Yes, I should really insist people refer to me as _Organa the Huttslayer.”_

Cassian laughs, and Leia offers him a smile, one that rapidly slips away.

“I want to ask you to postpone your trip to Ylesia.”

“Okay,” Cassian says. Easy as that. “May I ask why?”

“There’s an event I have to go to, in Canto Bight, and I would like you to go with me.”

Cassian stills, and digests this.

Canto Bight: located on Cantonica, a desert planet in the Corporate Sector of the Outer Rim. Canto Bight: a capital city built on the shores of the largest artificial ocean in the galaxy. Canto Bight: a tourist destination, a racetrack locale, a casino playland. Canto Bight: a getaway resort location for the galaxy’s richest citizens.

Cassian can immediately guess what kind of event waits for Leia there.

“Meeting with weapons manufacturers, are we?” he asks, voice quiet.

Leia sighs. “BlasTech Industries just unveiled a new blaster. They’re hosting a celebratory reception at the Casino, inviting all kinds of weapons manufacturers, royalty, gang leaders… and dignitaries.”

“I can’t believe Chancellor Mothma--”

“She isn’t thrilled, but it was her idea.”

Cassian stares. Leia shrugs.

“Peacetime is a delicate time,” she says, softly, and Cassian almost winces. He’s uttered those same words a million times. 

It should not surprise him that Mothma has signed off on sending New Republic representatives to meet with the elite rich who created the weapons that killed not only thousands of Imperials, but thousands of Alliance soldiers; Mothma has always been a negotiator more than anything else. Yet this feels different, like they’re giving away something of themselves they should keep close.

“She’d like the Department of Defense to make an appearance,” Leia continues. “Han is usually my date to these kinds of parties, but he… was politely asked never to return to Canto Bight. Some kind of incident a decade ago.”

Cassian can’t help but snort. Leia cracks a small smile.

“And, well, Cassian Andor, Head of Intelligence in the Outer Rim, seemed like a better fit,” Leia finishes.

“I am,” Cassian says.

He spent most of his adolescence in the Royal Imperial Academy, cozying up to and chatting casually with Imperial officers, all the while hiding his rebel status behind calculated laughter and derogatory statements about the Coruscant Rebellion. He spent most of his twenties as an Alliance officer, working in dark alleys, taking intel over puddles of blood. He’s handled a hundred types of blasters. He can hear one go off and know which kind it came from.

He’s traversed Star Destroyers and Cruisers, and can easily pilot a thousand others. He’s sharpened daggers and made blades out of discarded tech. He’s rigged bombs and carried raw detonite in his pockets.

He has made himself lethal.

If anything is a product of these weapons manufacturers, it’s Cassian Andor.

It is with this thought, this rumination on his life as a weapon, his past working among Imperial sympathizers in the Core, that has Cassian ask, “Do you want me to curb my accent?”

Leia stares.

Cassian looks back.

The long pause deepens, and it occurs to Cassian that Leia isn’t sure if he’s joking or not.

“I’m serious,” he says.

“Why would you need to curb your accent?” Leia asks, which is a very different question than the one he asked her.

“Wealthy Core Worlders don’t typically view an Outer Rim accent as… ideal. If you want to be sure I--and by extension you--are taken seriously, it isn’t a bad idea for me to pretend I have a Coruscanti accent, or something close.” Leia still looks unnerved, and Cassian begins to feel awkward. “I’ve heard you talk often enough that I could probably pull off a convincing Alderaanian accent, but that might lead to sympathy and other questions I can’t answer properly.”

He bites his lip to stop rambling.

He’s not sure why it’s this idea that has tripped Leia up, when the idea of Canto Bight had been only briefly unnerving to him. Both seem logical.

“I…” Leia trails off. She folds her arms across her chest, and taps the index finger of her right hand to her chin. “Sometimes… I forget.”

“Forget what?”

“How long you’ve been doing… this.”

There is something sad in Leia’s face now. Cassian dislikes it far more than her unease.

“I know,” he says, and to lighten the mood adds, “I’m ancient.”

He wishes for a laugh; he gets a small smiling nod in reply. It’ll have to do.

“I’ll have my secretary send the details to yours,” she says, straightening up. Cassian instinctively rises to mirror her. “Plan to leave in five days. The reception is one night, but I’m making arrangements to hold a couple of… low-key meetings in the days after. Taking advantage of the proximity of some of our allies, among others.”

“Sure,” Cassian says, making a note to get the details of these _among others_ from Leia’s secretary later. “Do you want me around for those?”

“Yes. Might even have you attend some meetings solo, in my stead.”

“That’s a lot of responsibility. Are you sure I’m up for it?”

He expects a laugh this time. It is more surprising not getting it for this moment.

Leia studies him, brown eyes impossibly big in her round face. Cassian knows he forgets how young Leia is; forgets that she’s twenty-eight years old, a mother to a four-year-old, a brand new Minister of Defense in a brand new Republic. But in moments like this, where Leia studies him with nothing to distract her; it is moments like this that make Cassian believe she has been around for centuries, and will continue to be for many more.

He feels oddly small in her sharp gaze.

He’s glad Leia Organa chose to fight for democracy over dictatorship.

“Cassian,” Leia says, and Cassian holds her gaze. “I have every confidence in you.”

He nods. It does not feel as sure as he thinks it should.

Leia gives her own parting nod back, and turns to leave. She hesitates then, one hand on the doorframe. Over her head, Cassian watches Chandra, a hazy purple moon, eclipsing the brilliant sun of Chandrila.

“Don’t change your accent,” Leia says, turning around as she speaks to face him again. “I know you think you won’t be taken seriously, and I understand that fear. But I think you should surprise them, instead. Keep them guessing. These weapons dealers, socialites, heirs… I’ve been around them my whole life. They know what I am. But they don’t know what you are.”

“What I am?” Cassian echoes.

“Yes.”

And with that, she leaves, Cassian still standing next to his desk.

 

* * *

 

The rest of the week passes uneventfully. It is filled with the usual meetings, with not entirely unexpected bits of intelligence coming in from Kessel and Bespin, with an outing to the market that was weeks overdue, with a future conference on Utapau booked. Cassian is at his usual level of busy, which is perhaps why the planned trip to Canto Bight doesn’t seem real until he’s sitting in the transport, listening to the soft hum of the ship as they race past the stars.

He checks the chronometer on his wrist. Six hours to go.

He’s on Leia’s private cruiser, which means it’s quiet and mostly empty, save for a handful of her staff and a couple of his. Cassian is used to being alone, has been alone for years, more time than he’d care to acknowledge, but there is something about being alone in space that is dizzying, and not in a hyper-rapture kind of way.

It’s a different kind of assault; closer to a wake-up call than a numbing.

He gets to his feet.

He can hear Leia’s voice down the hall, and so he walks, thinking he might as well check-in with her on some notes he has for a few of the guests reported to be attending this party. The door ahead is open, a soft blue light shining through, and he raises his fist to knock on the doorframe--

“Ben. Ben, honey.”

Cassian freezes.

He can see Leia’s back, her neck bent down, face turned towards the hologram resting on the chair in front of her. A young child’s face in hazy blue gazes back. He’s frowning, a big frown in an otherwise narrow face, fluffy hair falling over dark eyes.

“That’s not an answer, Momma,” Ben says.

“Soon, honey,” Leia says, voice a coo, and Cassian has never heard her like this. He can’t see her face, which he’s sure is similarly strange. “I’ve just got a few meetings on Canto Bight. Has your father ever told you about Canto Bight?”

“Can-toh…”

“Bight,” Leia says, and Cassian hears a _clack_ sound as she mashes her teeth together, a sound answered by her son’s surprised laugh. “Just like _bite.”_

 _“Bite,”_ Ben says, and makes a quieter _clack,_ his teeth softer and smaller.

“Just like that. It’s beautiful, Ben. It’s got a big ocean, bright beaches, a racetrack where they race fathiers--”

“Fathiers! Wanna ride one.”

Leia laughs, an eerie noise. “Maybe next time, sweetheart.”

“Next time? You an’ me?”

Leia stills for a moment, just looking down at the image of her son.

Then she nods.

“Yes, Ben. You and me. Next time.”

Cassian turns and walks away.

 

* * *

 

_“Then it’ll be something we do unofficially,” Cassian replies. “On our next official mission.”_

_“I don’t think we’re going to have any missions together for awhile.”_

_“That’s fine,” Cassian says. “I can wait. Next time.”_

_“Next time,” Jyn agrees._

 

* * *

 

_You and me. You and me. You and me._

 

* * *

 

_Leia, don’t break his heart._

 

* * *

 

“Well, don’t you clean up nice, Andor.”

Cassian rolls his eyes, fighting against the urge to look down at the suit he’s wearing. “I’d almost believe that was a compliment, if I couldn’t see your smirk.”

Leia’s smirk turns into a full grin. “But I thought I was hiding it so well?”

She stands, and walks towards him. She’s wearing a long silver dress that rustles softly against the bright red carpet as the hem trails behind her, with her hair done up in some ornate style Cassian has never seen before but would bet is familiar to an Alderaanian. He doesn’t dare ask about her shoes; the fact that the top of her head rises above his shoulder tells him the heels she’s wearing must hurt, a lot.

“You look presentable, Leia.”

She gives him a dark look. “I know. I’m a top-rate _piffer.”_

Her unexpected slang makes him laugh out loud _(Underneath it all Leia is just another twenty-eight-year-old trying to live her best life)_ and she winks. She takes his arm without asking, and they walk out of the room.

Canto Casino dominates the town, an architectural marvel modeled after a palace from one of the Core Worlds, or so Cassian assumes. He’s sure Leia would know. The air is loud with chatter, though it’s unlike any chatter Cassian associates with towns. Chatter in cities and towns he’s lived in, like Fulcra on Fest or Coronet City on Corellia, was filled with daily life. Vendors in open-air markets trying to sell food and wares, children running around small playgrounds, old men inhaling various colored smoke out of pipes, teenagers yelling over dejarik or Sabacc. 

Here, the chatter sounds artificial. People bragging in loud voices, describing the cost of their new speeder or their new wife’s wedding ring. People roaring outrageously, spilling gold-colored champagne carelessly on the cobblestones. People speaking more softly, casually and conspicuously swapping gambling chips and tablets of spice under jackets and into handbags. 

It is a town, a _world,_ Cassian has only glimpsed.

He suddenly feels very young again, a teenager on Coruscant, a teeanger walking past the Imperial Palace, bound for the Royal Imperial Academy.

“Leia…” he starts.

“Hm,” Leia says, and as if she can read his mind, adds, “Dreadful, isn’t it?”

His suggestion he mask his accent to be taken seriously returns to him; to go about speaking like someone from the Outer Rim seems even quainter now. “Leia, I should--”

“We have to wear a few masks tonight,” Leia says, voice lilting in a way that suggests frivolity and euphoria. It is a striking difference from what she normally sounds like, and Cassian is again visited by a feeling of vertigo like he’d felt on the ship.

_(You and me you and me you and me)_

They’re still walking. The piazza stretches ahead of them, fountains shooting off pearly water under the moonlight. A copper-colored speeder seating twelve people stops at the foot of the stairs leading up towards the Casino. Tipsy partygoers tumble out.

“Don’t focus on the wrong thing,” Leia says, and Cassian looks at her. She gazes back, one eyebrow arched, as if to dare him.

And he gets it, at last.

Understands that by wearing this dress, by speaking like this, by being an _heiress_ and _royalty,_ that Leia has disguised herself, distanced herself from who she really is: an accomplished war veteran and intimidating Minister of Defense. Someone who has made tough calls, and watched statues of the Emperor crumble.

Someone who once slayed a fierce Hutt on an Outer Rim planet, with the help of only a chain and her bare hands.

_“Yes, I should really insist people refer to me as Organa the Huttslayer.”_

_You should,_ Cassian thinks now. It would be Leia being her most honest self, maybe.

Her best and her worst.

(But he thinks also of Leia, the young mother with the young son, gnashing her teeth to make him laugh.)

(But the gnashing of teeth; that is its own form of restrained violence.)

(If Ben Solo is his mother’s son; the galaxy needs to start preparing now.)

Now--to focus on the _right_ thing.

“Focus on the right thing,” Cassian murmurs, and Leia gives an orchestrated nod, seemingly in response to the man dressed in robes of scarlet red who’s waving at her from the bottom of the stairs.

Tonight, he has to be himself.

The best and the worst parts.

The charismatic man from Fest, with the dimples and the short dark hair.

The cruel monster from the war, with the bloodstained hands and sharp dark eyes.

_You and me._

 

* * *

 

He hovers near Leia throughout the event, acting as part of her entourage, and it is not a lie, has never been a lie. He smoothly shakes hands with all the dignitaries and war lords she introduces him to, offering brief commentaries on their worlds or weapons; he’s got stories for and knowledge of all. He watches amusement turn into surprise, turn into something more thoughtful and calculating. There seems to be an expectation among these wealthy weapons designers that the Department of Defense at the New Republic is just a fleet of nervous, young Alliance refugees. Cassian is a sharp rebuke to that line of thinking, and Leia dazzles in it, and Cassian finds a bit of dark humor there as well.

He was never the poster boy for the Alliance; he was always fighting the war that the galaxy liked to pretend wasn’t happening. The war in the shadows, in the dark alleys, the grime and the muck and the blood. He was the Intelligence operative who didn’t really exist, not on paper and barely in life, either.

To watch this revelation dance across the faces of these weapons manufacturers and opportunists is satisfying in a way he never thought his past work would be.

He thinks that if General Draven were to walk into this room, that he’d go up to him, shake his hand, and say, _Maybe you were right for always pushing me._

It is not something he’s ever wanted, or imagined, doing or saying before.

It’s a good thing, maybe, that Draven is dead.

It is a different bit of surrealness that has him roped into joining a small group, a dozen or so others, who are all alumni of the Royal Imperial Academy.

Cassian has never flouted this bit of his past, has never used his time there as a jumping-off point in establishing a relationship, has never needed to network, and so he pretends this is the reason for his surprise. Because here is a group of wealthy, elite, successful citizens; tech innovators, craft designers, Imperial Navy veterans (there are tons of them here, and no one so much as points at the Bantha in the room), lobbyists, and the like. 

And then there’s Cassian.

“How many years was it after graduation that you defected and joined the Alliance?” 

The question comes from a woman, Helena, with bright pink hair and light orange skin, sipping a martini that is littered with what Cassian suspects are flakes of real gold.

He meets her gaze coolly, easily seeing past the casual facade she’s trying to project.

She might be good at hiding her disdain; maybe. Cassian is much, much better.

“The Alliance wasn’t officially formed until four years after my graduation,” he says, speaking quickly and surely, noting the minute frowns as some of the less-traveled partygoers parse through his accent. “So I think the best answer to your question is that I was a rebel before I started at the Academy.”

“How--”

“The Coruscant Rebellion had existed since the moment the Old Republic fell,” Cassian says, and studies the way a few of the others shrug indelicately; one man actually sneers. For many of the people in this room, the regime change from democracy to dictatorship was barely noticeable. “It wasn’t too difficult to find them. Working with them was an even quicker yes.”

Helena _tsks._ “And the Academy never knew?”

“Never. Strange, the things people can miss when they think they hold all the power.” He looks at the others. “Excuse me.”

 

* * *

 

He won’t get drunk--he isn’t _stupid--_ but he’s sure the champagne here is the kind of ridiculously expensive champagne he would never buy, and so he accepts a glass as it is offered to him by a tall droid plated in solid black platinum. He watches the droid incline its head at him before tottering off to the next guest.

 

* * *

 

_“I’m really happy you’re here, Kay.”_

_“I’m glad to be here, Cassian. I want to be here.”_

 

* * *

 

For all its strangeness, Canto Bight is familiar enough to draw sentimentality out of him.

 

* * *

 

Leia would kill him if he left the party entirely, so he decides to step out on the balcony instead.

The air is thick with the smell of the sea; but the Sea of Cantonica is completely artificial, so the salt smell Cassian associates with seas is gone, replaced by something less acrid. He inhales deeply; it smells closer to something like fresh rainwater, the air as a storm approaches. He walks to the balcony railing, and looks down. The waves crash below, splashing up against the cliff-face the Casino was built on. He turns his head, and further down he can see the edge of the beach, small bonfires populating the sand. The sea is loud enough to drown out the raucous partying of the figures dancing and drinking near the fires. Above it all, the moon is huge, lighting a long stretch of dark sea.

He turns around, and studies the balcony patio. It’s decorated on all sides by flowers and vines, scaling the walls and wrapping around the balcony rails. Cassian looks at the flowers, the reds and purples and whites, and then stills, catching sight of a thin antique vase, resting on a spindly table next to the wispy curtain separating the balcony from the rest of the party.

The vase is painted a soft cream, with swirling waves splashing on its sides. Cassian walks slowly around the vase, studying the art, the neat care the artist took to create separate bubbles of foam at the crest of each wave, how the neck of the vase is narrow but clearly strong, how the ceramic base is notched to exact measurements.

_“No, I mean…” Shara pauses, and her eyes are wide, and she’s staring at Cassian like she’s never actually seen him clearly before, and it’s enough to make Cassian, Jyn, and Kes all stare at her. “The Cassianos are a really well-known family on Sernpidal. Very famous. Like… The closest thing we have to royalty. They’re known for making the most beautiful, exquisite pottery on the planet, and they’re, like, insanely wealthy because of it.”_

He doesn’t know anything more about the Cassianos. He doesn’t know if their pottery spread outside of Sernpidal, spread as far as Cantonica. He doesn’t know if they had an undeniable style, something unique that any casual art lover could note with ease.

He looks at this vase, and squints, and wonders if Serafima’s hands ever touched it.

He lifts his own hand out, turning it to the side, and wonders if hands like his ever shaped this vase.

“Considering a new career?”

She’s snuck up on him.

A woman is eyeing him from the balcony railing. She’s leaned against it, her long dark blue dress a dim contrast in front of the similarly dark blue sea, the bright moonlight above both. Her hair falls to her waist, curls of deep red, and it reminds Cassian, because he’s Cassian, of recently spilled blood. She looks very relaxed, like she’s been here for hours, though Cassian knows she wasn’t there when he first walked outside.

“Not the calling for me,” he says, in response to her question.

The woman smiles. “I know what you mean.”

She stretches one arm out, past the crystal wine glass on the balcony railing, to pick up a small silver case. She opens it, facing it to Cassian. “Cigarette?”

He hasn’t smoked since his twenties, when he would smoke alongside Imperial officers on their breaks where they’d speak casually and candidly, when he would smoke in dirty bars and stained back rooms to fit into the scene better, when he would smoke to get his hands to stop shaking after a particularly gruesome kill. Yet he still nods, and goes to the woman, and accepts the cigarette she hands him.

She lights it, one quick flick from her lighter. He watches as she does the same to hers.

“Cheers,” she murmurs.

She takes a drag, staring him down contemplatively. He holds her gaze.

“General Cassian Andor,” the woman says, gray smoke curling out of the edges of her mouth. He can’t quite place her accent, exactly where she’s from; somewhere in the Inner Rim. “A senior member of Leia Organa’s team at the Department of Defense.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Have we met?”

He never forgets a face.

“No,” she says. “But you’ve made a splash here.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“No?” It’s her turn to arch an eyebrow. “Must be a natural standout, then.” She holds her free hand out, and Cassian takes it. “Isobel Fallow.”

“What do you do, Isobel?”

“Nothing that’d get a whole party talking,” she says, and at Cassian’s look, she adds, “I’m a date.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. And to answer your question, I’m here as Maxo Zann’s date. He’s--”

“The head of BlasTech Industries’ factories on Xagobah.”

Isobel laughs. “Look at you! Very good.”

“I try.”

“Not too hard, I imagine. Gathering information must come easy to you.”

He isn’t sure if she’s basing that off her prior knowledge of him working at the Department of Defense, or if she’s referring to his time in the Alliance. The latter seems incredibly unlikely.

“Do you come to these kinds of things often?” Cassian asks.

She shrugs. “Not receptions celebrating the creation of new weapons, necessarily. But expensive and fancy events that require a date who can understand lots of languages _and_ navigate her way around an Empress Teta-style banquet. That’s where I come in.”

“I see.”

She smiles. “You’ve never had to pay for a date, have you?”

He laughs. “Can’t say I have.”

“But you’re alone here.”

“I’m with Minister Organa.”

Isobel rolls her eyes. “I know. But everyone knows she didn’t bring her husband because he’s banned from stepping foot on any property in Canto Bight. But also maybe because a well-known weapons smuggler shouldn’t be mingling among said weapons manufacturers, hm?”

Privately, Cassian is certain this is the main reason Han was not invited. “Probably.”

“So because Leia Organa couldn’t bring her husband, you’ve come as her date? No date of your own?”

 

* * *

 

_“Jyn, you… You know that I consider you to be my family, right? You know that you’re all the family I could need?”_

 

* * *

 

“No, not tonight,” he says.

“Well, if you play your cards right… Maybe you can have one at the afterparty.”

Her dress has a slit in the side, just above her pale knee. He watches as she leans back on the sharp heel of her shoe, her foot making small circular arcs. Her toenails are dark red, close to the color of her hair.

“How long have you been in your line of work?” he asks.

She shrugs. “Years.”

“Most of your adulthood?”

She glances at him. “Yes.”

He flicks a bit of ash off the end of his cigarette, and watches as it floats down to the balcony floor. Isobel watches the movement too, and steps swiftly to the side to avoid any of it getting on her dress. He turns instead, leaning his side against the railing. Isobel mirrors him, pressing her hip against the railing. He watches this movement, and then looks up, into her dark eyes.

“I can tell you a bit about Minister Organa, if you’d like,” he says.

“I’ve always wanted to meet her,” Isobel says.

“I’m sure.” He pauses, and says, “She’s very smart, and she makes sure you know that. Sometimes, I think it would be… better, in the long-term, for people to think she is less brilliant than she is. To not think of her as an equal. But Leia pointed out, astutely, that it is already hard for people to think she even deserves to be _in_ the room. If she shows she’s smarter than them, they still treat her differently, but at least she has a seat at the table.”

Isobel nods. “She’s quite young, to be a cabinet-level Minister. Directly under the Chancellor. I would say you’re also quite young, to be running Intelligence for the Department of Defense.”

“I’ve been doing that kind of thing for quite a while,” Cassian says, softly.

“I’ve heard. It’s all very impressive. You and Minister Organa are quite a team. I’d love to hear more about how you work.”

“She’s very good at what she does.”

Isobel smiles flirtatiously, something dark gathering in her already dark eyes. “Me too.”

She steps a little closer.

“I can tell,” Cassian says.

Cassian looks at the cigarette in his hand, and then flicks it over the railing. They watch as it falls, its little orange light disappearing into the dark, into the crashing waves below.

“You’re good at what you do, too, aren’t you?” Isobel notes.

“I like to think so,” Cassian says. “Which is why I thought I’d talk a bit about Minister Organa.”

“You can tell I admire her? A young woman like that, running the _Defense_ of the New Republic…”

“I really couldn’t say if you admire her. I was more thinking about how you wanted to know more about her since you’re here to kill her.”

Isobel goes completely still.

Cassian laughs, but it’s not his real laugh. It’s a practiced laugh. It’s a laugh Isobel gave earlier. He’d know one anywhere.

“You’re really good,” he says. “Most people can’t sneak up on me like you did, because to do so they’d have to be trained at sneaking around nearly silently. Whoever trained you knows what they’re doing. Your lighter’s got a pretty well-concealed electric port; I haven’t seen one of those since I was working in the Coruscant Underworld, it’s such a temperamental weapon. Not very reliable. Only one you use when you’re desperate, I assume.”

Isobel watches him, face perfectly blank.

“Your accent is nearly perfect, too. You’ve only slipped up on a few of the _ah_ sounds. No Inner Rim World accent doesn’t have that. Where are you from?” He doesn’t give her a chance to answer; he knows she wouldn’t. 

“What kind of research did you do on me?” he asks instead. “Since you decided I was your best bet to get close to Leia, of all of the staff she has here with her. You clearly aren’t here to kill _me,_ or you would’ve tried it by now.”

“She trusts you,” Isobel says, and she doesn’t bother with the Inner Rim accent this time. He still can’t place this new accent. It’s from somewhere in the Outer Rim.

Just like his.

“She trusts a lot of people, including all the staff she brought with her tonight. Why _me?”_

Isobel smiles, and it’s a cold smile.

It’s _his._

“Because you’re the only one who’s been separated from his wife for three years,” Isobel says, and of all the reasons he guessed she’d give, this was not one of them. “Not that _lonely_ is a new thing for you; I doubt it could be, since you’re a former Alliance Intelligence officer. They never really had long life spans, did they?”

“I’m sure you would know.”

“Yeah,” she says, nodding. “You’re right.”

“How many did you kill?”

She laughs, and this laugh is louder. Because it’s truer. It sends chills down Cassian’s spine.

“I could also ask you how many of mine you got,” she says.

Cassian nods thoughtfully. “Former Imperial Intelligence?”

“I’d ask what gave me away, but I gave that one to you free of charge.” She studies him. “I always wanted to meet a counterpart. One who would know who I was, I mean. This is… surreal.”

“Better or worse than you imagined?”

“I thought you might be difficult to catch unprepared, but _you…_ That comment about the Coruscant Underworld. Not a lot of former Alliance officers have that background, do they? Not to mention those Royal Imperial Academy alums you were chatting with earlier. That _really_ isn’t something an Alliance officer should have in his background.”

“No,” Cassian says, because he can only think of one.

“I thought, then, of finding a different mark,” Isobel comments. “Except I knew that you might actually be someone interesting enough to talk to, and I thought I’d give it a shot. But you caught on so quickly. I’m impressed by you; which is both better _and_ worse, you know?”

He snorts a laugh. “Yeah. I do.”

“Of course you do,” Isobel says. 

He decides not to linger on that thought. “So because I’ve been separated from my wife for three years, you thought I’d make an easy mark to seduce, to get you close to your target?”

“Not my worst plan.”

“No, it’s pretty good. I can see the logic.”

She sighs. “You just aren’t what I was expecting.”

“Too loyal to my wife? I’d apologize, but--”

“Don’t be silly,” Isobel cuts him off. “It isn’t that, not really. Loyalty, I can twist. I can work with that. You’re just too _sad.”_

Cassian stares.

Isobel steps even closer. Now that she’s straightened up a bit, her eyes fall level with his nose, and she only has to tilt her head back a little to look at him.

“Darling,” she coos, lifting one hand to brush a finger over his face. “Have you ever met a sad man whose perspective you could change? You’ve been sad for too long. You’re set in your ways.”

“You can gather all that from a five minute conversation?” Cassian wonders.

“No, but meeting you did help,” Isobel notes. “I really only glossed over what might have made your wife leave you. It wouldn’t change my approach, normally. But it is telling, isn’t it, that Cassian Andor immediately signs up to join the Department of Defense within the New Republic, and Jyn Erso… doesn’t?”

“I left her,” Cassian says. 

The words come out unexpectedly. They cut his throat as they do, and he closes his mouth to hide the old ache.

“No, sweetheart,” Isobel says. “I don’t think so. I mean, sure, you might have been the one to walk out the door first. I wouldn’t know. But she left the war. She removed herself from it. And in that process, she removed herself from you, too.”

He can only stare.

“Don’t fret,” Isobel murmurs. “It happens to all of us.”

He’s never thought of their separation like that before.

 

* * *

 

_“Yeah,” Jyn says. “Because I know you.”_

_Cassian looks at her, and she sees the question in his eyes._

_“You think you don’t have morals, but you do,” Jyn says. “It’s the Rebellion. That’s where your morality is, for better or worse. You put the Rebellion before anything else. It’s your constant, it’s where you’ve always lived. Not Fest, or Coruscant, or Corellia; those were just… landscapes. A place to sleep. The Rebellion has always been your home, and everything I could ever need to know about you… It’s all there. That’s who you are.”_

 

* * *

 

Isobel watches this play out over his face, and he finds he can’t school his expression.

“Oh, that’s so disappointing,” she murmurs. “I guess I could have used your sadness after all. Better luck next time.”

It is only decades of experience that has Cassian catching her hand, the hand that she used to smoothly grab the dagger from the holster under her dress, something Cassian had guessed she had from the way she was standing earlier. He can feel the edge of the dagger pressing into his shirt.

“You _have_ been in this line of work for awhile, haven’t you?” he says.

“I’d bet close to as long as you have,” she replies.

Her heel catches the back of his knee, nearly sending him straight into the blade, but he jams her hand to the side, causing her to gasp. With his free hand, he grabs her hair, and yanks her head back.

“Ugh,” she groans. “I really did think about cutting my hair.”

“It looks nice.”

“Aw. I didn’t know you were sweet. Thought that smile was all fake.”

“It usually is,” he admits, and is forced to let her hair go when she swings her crystal glass around, smashing it to the side of his face. It shatters, bits falling over his jacket.

Free, Isobel is a new force to be reckoned with.

He starts to think that maybe she was trained at the Royal Imperial Academy, going by the way she fights.

Because she fights like him.

(He grabs her wrist, and pulls her arm, and she hisses.)

Tonight has been a lot, he thinks. More than he was expecting. Too many things strange, and too many things familiar. His past running up to him, and slamming into him.

(Isobel lands a hit to his side, and he gasps.)

All of this; this is exactly where he knew he would be, back when he dared picture his future.

(His fist catches her chin, leaving a bright red mark on her pale skin.)

It is fitting, he thinks, that Isobel, this mirror of his past, has confronted him now, at this time.

He’s almost watching from outside himself now, like he’s a spectator watching two assassins, two child soldiers, fight to kill the other.

This could be the reason why, when he shoves Isobel to the railing, when he uses his weight advantage to push her, when she tips over the side, he doesn’t notice how her hand wraps around his belt until she pulls him over with her.

He barely manages to snag one of the rungs of the railing.

Her other hand is wrapped around his forearm, nails digging into the skin under his jacket. She lets go of his belt, only to snake her arm around his waist.

He knows nothing short of a hurricane would make her let go.

If he pulls himself up, he pulls her up with him.

The ocean is much louder on this side of the railing.

He gasps, clinging to the edge with one hand, and dares to look down.

Dark brown eyes look up at him from under a fringe of wet blood-red hair. Her eyes are wide, and wet, and close to resigned.

He has been there before. It’s been a while. But he can feel the very things she is, has wanted the very thing he knows she wishes for now.

“Let go,” Isobel whispers. “It’s just you and me. _End it._ I know how much you want to.”

_I don’t._

_I don’t._

_You and me._

_Me and you._

He lets go.

The ocean rushes up, and claims them both.

 

* * *

 

He stares out at the ocean.

The clouds are fluffy white, and completely still in the sky. He can’t see the sun from behind them, but it’s clearly there; something so stunningly bright he has to squint at it.

He turns his head, and freezes.

Bodies litter the beach. Stormtroopers and armed rebels alike, blasters and spent grenades dotting the sand next to the corpses. Small fires burn among the shallow graves. He looks up, and catches sight of a burning palm tree, blackened leaves curled up at the base.

It hits him, then, where he is.

Some days, he thinks he never left.

Scarif is barely a memory, the sight and feel and smell of it so clear. Smoke trails in the sky mark the paths of the x-wings and TIE fighters that fought in the once clear blue space. The small waves that lap the shore gently are marked in spots by blood that has stained the water. The brightness of the lethal blast of a weapon that should never have existed will forever scar the skyline. Shrapnel behind him marks the spot where the satellite dish hit the beach after its long fall from the tower.

It is not the only thing that has fallen recently.

_He lets go._

_The ocean rushes up, and claims them both._

He looks down. He is unsurprised to find himself wearing the clothes he was wearing the last time he was here; the black boots, gray Imperial officer pants, formerly pale shirt now darkened with sweat and the blood curdling out from the cut in his side. He touches the spot gingerly.

_“It’s just you and me. End it. I know how much you want to.”_

He isn’t in nearly the same amount of pain he was last time he was on the beach, when his breath ached around his cracked ribs, when it was all he could do to lean on--

“Jyn,” he breathes.

He turns on the spot, but all the bodies he sees are dead, and none of them are her.

“Jyn,” he repeats, and then louder, “Jyn! Jyn!”

The soft sound of feet running on sand has him turning.

A little girl is running along the beach. A heavy backpack thuds against her shoulders as her boots send up splashes of water in the surf. Her thin brown hair is tied back in two short braids, and she’s panting, her hands in tight fists at her sides as she runs.

He is less surprised to see Jyn as a little girl than he is by the fact she’s responded to his call.

He watches Jyn, as she reaches him, and runs past him.

He chases after her.

Jyn sprints like she will die if she doesn’t get to her destination, and it’s really all Cassian can do to keep up. She runs around fallen trees and jumps over seagrass, and Cassian is so focused on her that it takes a bit before he realizes the landscape has changed.

They are no longer on the bright beach of Scarif, but running along the dark hills of Lah’mu.

He stares around in confusion, slowing as he does.

A light rain begins to fall.

Luckily, Jyn is also slowing.

She darts into a cave, running to the back of the wall. He watches as she lifts the top off a rock, revealing something like a trapdoor. She clambers into it, and Cassian follows. The trapdoor is too small for him to fit into, so he stays above, kneeling in the dirt, and looking at Jyn below.

She’s described this moment to him before. He knows she’s here because the Man In White has come to Lah’mu, Lyra has just been killed, and Galen has chosen to follow the Empire away.

She’s hiding until Saw Gerrera can reach her.

Jyn pulls a lantern out of her pack, and flicks it until the little light comes on.

The light catches on the kyber crystal newly hanging around her neck.

It’s the same one Cassian has been wearing for the last five years. The one he was wearing when he let go of the railing on Canto Bight, and plummeted to the ocean below.

“Jyn,” he whispers.

He doesn’t think she’ll respond, but she does, blinking up at him.

Tears lighten her mossy green eyes.

 _Why am I here?_ Cassian thinks. Why is he seeing her like this, now?

Jyn’s voice is higher and softer than he’s ever imagined it when she speaks: “I have to wait.”

He stares at her.

She meets his gaze, sniffling a little, and tucks her knees close to her chest.

It reminds him so much of the trip back to Yavin 4 after Eadu, when Jyn hid in the bottom compartment of the Imperial shuttle, so no one on Rogue One could see her cry for her father. Cassian had crawled into the space after her, to sit next to her, to sympathize with the loss of a parent and to apologize for Galen’s death.

Telling Jyn Erso he would help her find her father, all the while planning how to kill him; it was the first time Cassian Andor broke her trust. It was not the last time.

 

* * *

 

_“I’m so tired of people leaving,” Jyn whispers, and tears are sliding down her face._

_“Me, too,” Cassian murmurs._

 

* * *

 

He looks at Jyn now, this child who has just lost both her parents, and is waiting for the arrival of a surrogate third, who will also one day leave her.

He looks at her, as yet another member of her family who will choose to leave her.

“Where did you go?” he hears himself whisper.

Because she didn’t go to Lah’mu.

The war ended for her, and she didn’t go home.

He’s spent the years since he left trying to figure out where she might have gone instead.

Jyn tucks her chin into her knees. “I have to wait,” she repeats.

She hasn’t really been speaking to him, he realizes. She’s been speaking to herself, to remind herself of what the next step is in her parents’ escape plan for her. She has to wait for Saw Gerrera to find her before she can leave this place.

She has to wait for family to come to her so she can leave her home, to go to the next one.

It hits him like a lightning bolt, like a blast from the Death Star, like something that kills him.

“Onderon,” Cassian murmurs. “You went to Onderon, didn’t you?”

It’s so obvious now. He might have known all along.

Jyn picks at a small bit of dirt on the side of her boot.

_“Let go,” Isobel whispers._

Cassian closes his eyes.

He gets to his feet, and Jyn disappears into the dark.

 

* * *

 

When Cassian wakes, he tastes rainwater in his mouth.

Leia is seated next to his bed, calmly typing something in a datapad.

She looks up when he coughs, spitting water from the Sea of Cantonica onto his pillow.

 _“Nice,_ Andor,” Leia says, and stands. She retrieves a tissue from the table behind her, and immediately hands it to Cassian, holding the box in her lap when she sits back down.

“How long?” Cassian asks, and finds his throat is surprisingly dry for someone who just drowned.

“You’ve only been out for four hours,” Leia notes. “And that was really just to get your core temperature back up. They got you out of the water very quickly; I imagine the police here have to deal with gamblers and party goers tumbling into the ocean every now and then. Other than your temperature, you’re completely fine, which is very impressive. The doctor anticipated a broken bone or two. It’s not an easy fall from that height.”

“No, it was not.”

He can remember a bit of it. How the wind whipped up into his face, how his feet brushed against the rocky cliff-face on the way down. How the water felt like a thousand knives sinking into his skin. How Isobel let go the second they hit the water.

“The woman,” he says, “Did--”

“They pulled her body out of the sea an hour ago,” Leia replies. “She was harder to find. Her dress was made of Auropyle fabric; very pretty, very expensive, and very heavy. It dragged her down.”

He nods.

“Who was she?” Leia asks.

“An assassin,” Cassian replies. “A former Imperial officer, I think, now a gun for hire. She was in Canto Bight to kill you.”

“Oh.” Leia pauses, taking this in. Cassian frowns.

“Surprised?”

“She pulled you over a railing. I assumed she meant to kill you.”

Cassian shrugs. “Someone saw that, I take it?”

“Oh, yes. A neat disruption to the party. I was in the middle of a dangerously boring conversation with the Minister of Hypori. I would thank you for the interruption, if you hadn’t nearly died.”

“You’re welcome, anyway.”

Leia eyes him. “Other than the near-drowning, are you feeling alright?”

“Sure. I survived, didn’t I?”

“You did,” Leia says, slowly, speaking as if the fact of Cassian’s survival is not enough of an answer to her question.

Cassian thinks of how Leia said Isobel pulled him over the railing.

He thinks about telling her it was him who chose to let go.

Part of him thinks she already knows this, and is daring him to tell her.

They stare at each other.

“Well,” Leia says, breaking the staring and standing up. “I’m glad you survived, Cassian. Though I do have to go to the meetings you were supposed to attend, now.”

She is in the doorway when Cassian calls after her.

“Leia.”

“Yes?”

“When you asked me to come here,” Cassian says, and Leia frowns, but nods. “And you said I should use my regular accent, and speak like myself, to keep them guessing, because they didn’t know what I am. What did you mean by that? What I am?”

Leia looks at him.

“I meant,” she says, “That you’re Cassian Andor. And they’ve never had to deal with anyone like you before.”

Cassian thinks about this.

And he nods.

Leia gives him her own parting nod, and then leaves, disappearing down the hall with a couple of her staff trailing her.

Cassian leans back, and looks up at the ceiling.

And he thinks about Isobel.

 

* * *

 

When it comes to near-death experiences, drowning is bizarrely innocuous.

Cassian goes back to work right away.

His staff is anxious, besieging him with their questions and worries, and so Cassian spends the first hour of his first day back from Cantonica speaking with them, both assuring them of his stability, and also to tell them about the trip. There is a bit of information they should be aware of; namely, the existence of Isobel Fallow, and whoever might have hired her to kill Leia Organa.

(Maxo Zann was, of course, entirely oblivious to Isobel’s deceit. Cassian had expected as much. Isobel was far too smart to clue him in on her real motive to attend the reception.)

He is completely unsurprised when none of his team is able to find a trace of Isobel Fallow. It was always a longshot, and he doubts Isobel Fallow was even her real name.

She was an assassin. An Intelligence operative. For a long time. That much he knows, and it’s enough to tell him he will never find out who she really was, or where she came from.

There are thousands of people in the galaxy living with the same questions about him.

 

* * *

 

He finds Jyn.

She’s on Onderon.

(He woke up with rainwater and the word _Onderon_ in his mouth.)

She’s actually living and working under her real name. She’s running an orphanage she founded, one that takes in war orphans.

He reads everything he can about it, from permits for a remodel on the building she applied for, to a short article that appeared in Iziz’s local media. He gathers a sense of confusion among the people of Onderon; Jyn just showed up one day, and set about taking care of the orphans that filled the streets of Iziz.

She didn’t go to Lah’mu. She didn’t go home.

And yet: she’s working to find a home for children.

It is hard work, yet kind, and selfless, and it’s all Jyn Erso. Of course this is what Jyn Erso has chosen to do with her life after the war.

He tells Leia about it.

“Huh,” she says, setting her cup of caf down. “I never really thought of Jyn as _maternal.”_

“I imagine she might say the same about you.”

Leia cackles. “You know, I do think you’re right about that, Andor.”

Cassian smiles, and looks down at the file in front of him, the file filled with everything he could gather about Jyn and the orphanage.

“The next time you meet with Human Services,” he murmurs, “Would you mind--”

“Not at all,” Leia says.

She reaches out, and snags the file from Cassian.

“An orphanage for war orphans will be easy to shine a spotlight on,” Leia notes. “It’s an admirable cause.”

 _It is,_ Cassian thinks.

Of course it’s the one Jyn has chosen.

 

* * *

 

Cassian no longer spends his spare time at the office searching for Jyn, which leaves him uncertain as to what his next hobby might be.

It does result in him leaving the office at something close to a _normal_ time.

This is why he walks through the front door of his flat when the hologram messenger begins to ring.

He shrugs off his coat, carefully hanging it over the nearest chair, drops his keys in the bowl on the front table, and sets his bag on the floor. It was a colder day on Chandrila, so he pauses to peel off his gloves while he looks at who might be calling him.

_Kes Dameron._

It’s been several months since Cassian saw Kes, Shara, and Poe. He imagines Kes might be calling to see when Cassian can make another trip out to see them, or if they might be able to come visit him on Chandrila.

He leans over, and accepts the call.

Kes’ face, shaped in blue, blinks at him.

“Hi, Kes,” Cassian says.

Kes takes a deep breath.

_“Cassian.”_

Cassian has delivered a lot of bad news. On Fest, he told mothers and fathers that their children, kids his own age he himself had recruited, had died in bombings in the streets of Fulcra. On Coruscant, he told friends of the deaths of their longtime team members, in skirmishes with stormtroopers in the Underworld. On Hoth, he sought out the occasional husband or wife to tell them their spouse’s x-wing had been shot down over some faraway planet.

He knows what someone sounds like when they are sharing bad news.

“Kes,” Cassian breathes. “What is it?”

Kes nods, swallows, and nods again. His face scrunches up.

 _Who is it?_ Cassian thinks.

“It’s Shara,” Kes says. “Cassian, it’s Shara.”

 

* * *

 

_Cassian and Shara are sheltered under the eave, and so they sit, and watch the rain, and listen to the soft sounds it makes as it hits the leaves, the grass, the house._

_Or, at least, Cassian is; Shara is watching him. Fondly, and a little sadly._

_“What do you want, Cassian?”_

 

* * *

 

_I want you to live._

 

* * *

 

But Kes speaks, and tells him that this want will not be fulfilled.

Cassian, and Leia, need to go to Yavin 4.

Shara Bey is dying.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end of this story serves as an immediate introduction to AMOR FATI. Kes calls Jyn after he calls Cassian. Before I settled on Latin titles for that story, I titled Chapter 1 as "Shara Bey Is Dying". it felt natural to end this story with those words. I know it's a sad ending, but it's the true ending, considering where we begin AMOR FATI. Shara Bey is dying.
> 
> This story is the collision of Cassian's past finally catching up to him; so italicized passages are from GRAY AREAS, YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS, and AMOR FATI.
> 
> Cassian never met his "actual" match in the Nonsense; someone exactly like him but on the other side. Isobel was a fun exercise in what that might be like. the answer: It is not as disturbing as Cassian feared. if anything is disturbing, it is the friendly familiarity he and Isobel exchange. Here you are; here you have always been.
> 
> The knowledge that Cassian begins AMOR FATI fresh off this interaction colors a bit of his actions, I think. the idea he had, that Jyn left him before he left her; it's so far out of left field. It had to have been something he'd been spending a lot of time thinking about recently, something he had heard and been nearly undone by. Isobel is a reminder of what he's always known: He is the war, every aspect and part of it.
> 
> Cassian does not begin AMOR FATI as his best self. arguably, he has never been his best self. while he spends the four years of separation in a free fall, Jyn spends it by pulling herself up to something better. Jyn would pull Isobel up with her, and win the fight there. Cassian lets himself fall, knowing it will probably kill Isobel, and him, too, and thinking this is an acceptable cost, and one that is a long time coming.
> 
> If Isobel is a metaphor for the end of the war: Jyn pulls herself free and moves on; Cassian lets himself fall wherever he will.
> 
> I am sorry this story took so long to finish. That is VERY unlike me. I have no excuse. 
> 
> This story is for [@leaiorganas](https://leaiorganas.tumblr.com/) who is lovely, thoughtful, and generous. And kind; kindness is such an expensive trait, I have to highlight it here. I could write her a hundred more stories and not even bridge the gap of giving she has shown me.
> 
> I am also on [tumblr](https://theputterer.tumblr.com).


End file.
